Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2016
From insideHPC
Exxact to Build HPC Solutions Using NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPUs
Today Exxact Corporation announced its planned production of HPC solutions using the NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPU accelerator for PCIe. Exxact will be integrating the Tesla P100 into their Quantum family of servers, which are currently…
From insideHPC
Video: Steve Conway from IDC Recaps ISC 2016
In this video from ISC 2016, Steve Conway from IDC recaps the event. "Attended by over 3,000 individuals, ISC is a not-to-miss event for the high performance computing community. It offers a strong five-day technical program …
From insideHPC
Interview: Why DDN is Dominating the TOP500
Today DDN announced it has increased its leadership as the dominant storage provider of the world’s fastest supercomputers for the eighth consecutive year with storage solutions that power more than 70 percent of identifiable…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cisco on Digital Transformation
Cisco blog looking at the basic elements of digital transformation. The details still need lots of work, and they need to be forward forecast against likely technology changes.
From insideHPC
Intel Furthers Machine Learning Capabilities
"Intel provided a wealth of machine learning announcements following the Intel Xeon Phi processor (formerly known as Knights Landing) announcement at ISC’16. Building upon the various technologies in Intel Scalable System Framework…
From insideHPC
SGI to Power 1.9 Petaflop Supercomputer at University of Tokyo
The University of Tokyo has chosen SGI to perform advanced data analysis and simulation within its Information Technology Center. The center is one of Japan's major research and educational institutions for building, applying…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Replacing Executive Decision Making?
It remains a big question what kinds of decisions AI will be able to replace in the short and longer term. For the executive, it is not too much different than other 'assistant' roles, but with different focus and scope of data…
From insideHPC
Supercomputer Power Management
Today’s HPC supercomputers have significant power requirements that must be considered as part of their Total Cost of Ownership. In addition, efficient power management capabilities are critical to sustained return on investment…
From Putting People First
UX in government: Why we need to stop calling it “citizen experience”
Cultural anthropologist Jamie Lee writes that she is fully on board with UX’s role in the public sector, and that she is an advocate for its unique role in more ethical governance with, rather than just for, communities. She …
From Schneier on Security
Interview with an NSA Hacker
Peter Maas interviewed the former NSA official who wrote the infamous "I Hunt Sysadmins" memo. It's interesting, but I wanted to hear less of Peter Maas -- I already know his views -- and more from the NSA hacker....
From Schneier on Security
Security Analysis of TSA PreCheck
Interesting research: Mark G. Stewart and John Mueller, "Risk-based passenger screening: risk and economic assessment of TSA PreCheck increased security at reduced cost?" Executive Summary: The Transportation Security Administration's…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Software Social Organisms: Implications for Measuring AI progress
" ... Just a reminder about our Cognitive Systems Institute Group Speaker Series on Thursday June 30, 2016 at 10:30 am ET US (9:30am CT, 7:30 am PT). Our presenter this week is Ken Forbus from Northwestern University who will…
From insideHPC
Thomas Sterling presents: HPC Achievement and Impact 2016
Thomas Sterling presented this keynote at ISC 2016 in Frankfurt. "Even as the hundred petaflops era is coming within sight, more dramatic programs to achieve exaflops capacity are now emerging with the expectation of this two…
From BLOG@CACM
A Jolt or Two (Part 1)
You cannot learn something if you think you already know it, and don't.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
White House OSTP Request for Information on Artificial Intelligence
The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) just released a Request For Information (RFI) on Artificial Intelligence. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies offer great promise for creating new and innovative products…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Ask for A Skill You Need
You can now enable an Amazon Echo skill by just asking for it. Makes lots of sense. Does assume you know the name of the skill and how it works. More important, providing more and better skills.There are now some 1400 examples…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing Gravitational Waves at NCSA
"Gravitational wave astrophysics will enter a new phase during the second observing run," said Eliu Huerta, head of the relativity group at NCSA and leader of the 18-member NCSA LIGO team at Illinois. "Given the detection rate…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing the Link Between Life and Water
"For a long time, scientists have been trying to figure out how water interacts with proteins. This is a fundamental problem that relates to protein structure, stability, dynamics and—finally—function,” said Zhong, who is the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Value of Bots for Banks
We were closely involved in the knowledge architecture for bots for consumer interfaces, so this is a very interesting development. How does this adapt to the conversation? The goals of the participants? The risks of error…
From insideHPC
KAUST Empowers Researchers to Think Big
In this special guest feature, Jane Glasser writes that Saudi Arabia has moved into the global supercomputing top ten with Shaheen II, a 200,000-core behemoth that’s taming global warming, earthquakes, and more. "With 5.536 Pflops…
From insideHPC
For SGI, This is Supercomputing at ISC 2016
In this video from ISC 2016, Gabriel Broner from SGI describes the company's innovative solutions for high performance computing. "As the trusted leader in high performance computing, SGI helps companies find answers to the world…
From Schneier on Security
Facebook Using Physical Location to Suggest Friends
This could go badly: "People You May Know are people on Facebook that you might know," a Facebook spokesperson said. "We show you people based on mutual friends, work and education information, networks you're part of, contacts…
From Putting People First
Politicians need to commit to ethnographic research if they want to understand people
Business anthropologist Simon Roberts has campaigned hard for the “Remain” side in the UK referendum and is deeply disappointed. He now explores a topic that I too have been arguing for some time now: Politicians, political parties…
From Putting People First
[Book] The Ethics of Influence: Government in the Age of Behavioral Science
The Ethics of Influence: Government in the Age of Behavioral Science by Cass R. Sunstein Cambridge University Press, September 2016 In recent years, ‘Nudge Units’ or ‘Behavioral Insights Teams’ have been created in the United…
From Phys.org Technology News
US Navy turns to cloud technology to reduce drunken driving
An American sailor has tapped a cloud-based technology for mobile phones to make it easier to have volunteers take turns driving drunk friends home, an initiative that has curtailed drunken driving among the Navy ranks.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Numerical to Categorical
From DSC, my comments: Converting Numerical to Categorical variables. Simple, largely non technical piece on the topic. Whats nice about this approach, when appropriate, is that it can be readily explained to those that own…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Project Tango Video
Video of project Tango, using a smartphone, here used to map and discover contents of a Barcelona complex museum floor. Consider retail applications to make navigation, discovery and engagement more intelligent. With existing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Marketplace for Curriculum
In the midst of developing a curriculum ....Amazon Is Taking On Google in the Battle for the ClassroomIn Time by Leena RaoAmazon is looking to deepen its ties to the education world with a new online marketplace for lesson plans…
From insideHPC
Intel Xeon Phi Developer Access Platform at ISC 2016
In this video from ISC 2016, Kirti Devi from Intel describes the new Intel Developer Platform for the Intel Xeon Phi processor. "With this program, Intel and its partner Colfax are widening early levels of access, support and…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Accelerating Accelerating Artificial Neural Networks at ISCA 2016
The following is a special contribution to this blog by CCC Executive Council Member Mark D. Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Even with the slowing of Moore’s Law and the end of Dennard scaling, computer chips can…