Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2017
From insideHPC
Interview: Piz Daint Supercomputer advances to the #3 position on the TOP500
In this video from PASC17 in Lugano, Michele De Lorenzi from CSCS discussed the recent advancement of Piz Daint supercomputer to the #3 position on the TOP500. After that, he describes the mission of the PASC conference and the…
From insideHPC
Andrew Jones wraps up ISC 2017
In this special guest feature, Andrew Jones from NAG offers his perspective on ISC 2017. How he came to know such things is a mystery as Mr. Jones did not attend the show this year. One thing is for sure; from now on I'm going…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Coding is Not a Four Letter Word
I am at ISTE and have lost count of the times today someone said "you can program this without knowing how to code." Usually they mean this because they use a block based programming environment like Scratch or Blockly or Snap…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Note Taking
Have been reexamining note taking systems. Had only briefly looked at OneNote before. Nicely done. The basic ideas should be fundamental, and easily connected to the many channels now online. Would also be useful to think…
From My Biased Coin
STOC General Comment Page
The 2017 STOC is over, and I thought it went very well. The new format ran with what seemed to me to be minimal to non-existent glitches, and overall it sounded like people enjoyed it. The local arrangements were terrific -…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Models of China Ambitions and Directions
Wharton has published a special, multi segment piece on new China Strategy and Economics. We did lots of work trying to understand the direction of China using advanced agent models. Often touched upon in this blog. This…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Democratizing Design for Future Computing Platforms
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) has been working hard on various white papers over the past couple of months and slowly releasing them. You can see all of them here. Today, we highlight one paper in particular, called…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Who Does Selfies?
Or perhaps the nature of derived meta data about self imagery.
Selfies: We Love How We Look and We're Here to Show You
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology say they have analyzed 2.5 million selfie posts on Instagram…
From Schneier on Security
Separating the Paranoid from the Hacked
Sad story of someone whose computer became owned by a griefer: The trouble began last year when he noticed strange things happening: files went missing from his computer; his Facebook picture was changed; and texts from his daughter…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Chat Bot for Company Knowledge
I got a note recently that I should try Obie as a chat bot based on corporate knowledge provided in Slack. I have now used Slack for several projects, fine as a chat space for team projects, somewhat quirky, hard to integrate…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Closer Look at Amazon Echo Show
A closer review of the Amazon Echo Show, essentially a full Amazon Echo with a screen added. As skills are built for it, should add a visual dimension to assistance. Google Home has this already through 'casting', but I
I…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing the Secrets of the Snake Genome at TACC
Researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington are using TACC supercomputers to study the unique traits of snake evolution. Led by assistant professor of biology Todd Castoe, the team is exploring the genomes of snakes and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bots Making up Languages
How might we be able to use this to teach and learn from Bot communications? As suggested below, this is probably not a formal language, as we understand it. But any stream of data from any sensor is a language of sorts, which…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Scalable Data Unification
Have not read yet, but starts at some of the right issues.
The Seven Tenets of Scalable Data Unification
by Michael Stonebraker, Chief Technology Officer, Tamr Inc.
Executive Summary
This paper defines the concept and process of…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
ISTE 2017- A First Look
If I am seeing a theme at ISTE 2017 so far it is making. Session after session demonstrates learning by making things. No where is this more true than with computer science. Micro:bit and AdaFruit Circuit Playground Express are…
From insideHPC
Intel Omni-Path Architecture: Incredible Momentum for a New Technology
This is the last of four articles on Intel Omni-Path Architecture (Intel OPA) next-generation fabric for high-performance computing (HPC) solutions. Intel OPA is in clusters used for traditional supercomputing, artificial intelligence…
From Computational Complexity
Best. STOC. Ever.
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| The Panel on TCS: The Next Decade |
…
From insideHPC
Video: Scaling Climate and Weather Forecasting on Sunway TaihuLight
Haohuan Fu from Tsinghua University in China at the PASC17 conference in Lugano. "This talk reports efforts on refactoring and optimizing the climate and weather forecasting programs – CAM and WRF – on Sunway TaihuLight. To map…
From Schneier on Security
The FAA Is Arguing for Security by Obscurity
In a proposed rule by the FAA, it argues that software in an Embraer S.A. Model ERJ 190-300 airplane is secure because it's proprietary: In addition, the operating systems for current airplane systems are usually and historically…
From insideHPC
HPC Capacity Doubles on Irish Supercomputer List
The 8th Irish Supercomputer List was released last week, featuring two new Top500-class machines. The new entrants, from an undisclosed software company, feature at spots 196 and 197 on the 49th Top500 Supercomputer List, each…
From insideHPC
Video: The Amazing Lustre through the Alps Tour
We interrupt our stream of serious HPC news for this post-ISC update from Europe. "After ISC wrapped up last week, I had the good fortune to join the First Annual Lustre Motorcycle Tour of the Alps. This amazing three day trip…
From insideHPC
Proceedings from ISC 2017 are now available for download
The Proceedings from ISC 2017 are now available for download at no cost for a limited time. "We are pleased to announce that many fascinating topics in HPC are covered by the proceedings."
The post Proceedings from ISC 2017 are…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Theory of Agile Constraints
Newly discovered in InfoQ:
Evan Leybourn of IBM on the Theory of Agile Constraints ...
Business Agility in general .....
He defines (full interview at the link):
I wrote about this in my article on, and with apologies to Eliyahu…
From insideHPC
PEARC17 Seeds Next Generation of HPC Professionals
Today PEARC17 announced that 66 students will attend their conference coming up July 9-13 in New Orleans. PEARC17—Practice & Experience in Advanced Research Computing 2017—is for those engaged with the challenges of using and…
From insideHPC
How Zettar Transferred 1 Petabyte of Data in Just 34 Hours Using AIC Servers
In the world of HPC, moving data is a sin. That may be changing. "Just a few weeks ago, AIC announced the successful completion of a landmark, 1-petabyte transfer of data in 34 hours, during a recent test by Zettar that relied…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Turing Award at 50
Twitter Stream from ACM's 'Turing Award at 50' meeting this week. Watched small part of it, inspirational and am glad to see it will be made available on going, details at the link.
ACM Marks 50 Years of the ACM A.M. Turing Award…
From The Eponymous Pickle
New Origami Folding Algorithm
A favorite and surprisingly useful topic. Heard of this being developed. 'Any structure' is an interesting statement, but will the folding itself be usefully practical? Even so a remarkable result.
New Algorithm Generates…
From Geeking with Greg
Two decades of Amazon.com recommendations
On its 20th anniversary, the editorial board created its first ever “The Test of Time” award. I'm honored to say they gave it to our 2003 article, "Amazon.com Recommendations…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Snap Getting Better Store Sale Measures
Snap acquires Placed to better measure in-app ads to in-store sales
Placed is able to attribute brand’s digital, TV and out-of-home campaigns to store visits and in-store sales.
Tim Peterson on June 5, 2017 at 9:10 pm
Snapchat’s…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Getting Direct to Consumer Right
From CustomerThink, detailed piece on how Gillette is doing direct to consumer, followiing un a number of moves to deliver quality razor blades with new pricing and replenishment models.
Gillette Shows How to Get It Right When…