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
Cavium’s ThunderX2 Processors coming to Penguin Computing Tundra OCP Platform
Today Penguin Computing, a provider of high-performance computing, enterprise datacenter and cloud solutions, announced availability of its Tundra Extreme Scale (ES) server platforms based on Cavium second-generation ARMv8-based…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Micro:bit Small-board Computer Launches in U.S. & Canada
The Micro:bit (nee BBC Micro:bit) is now available in the US and Canada. This little device has been in classrooms in the United Kingdom for about a year and a half but is only now become commonly available in the US and Canada…
From insideHPC
Lenovo Powers World’s Largest Skylake Cluster at Barcelona Supercomputing Center
Today Lenovo announced the deployment of the world’s largest, next-generation Intel-based Supercomputer at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). The 11.1 petaFLOP1 Supercomputer called MareNostrum 4, will be housed in the…
From Schneier on Security
Ceramic Knife Used in Israel Stabbing
I have no comment on the politics of this stabbing attack, and only note that the attacker used a ceramic knife -- that will go through metal detectors. I have used a ceramic knife in the kitchen. It's sharp....
From insideHPC
Video: Quantum Steps up with High Speed Parallel Storage at ISC 2017
In this video from ISC 2017, Molly Rector from Quantum describes the company's advanced storage solutions for high performance computing. "At the core of all Quantum scale-out storage is StorNext advanced data management—engineered…
From Mostafa Dehghani
On Search Powered Navigation
Our paper "On Search Powered Navigation", with Glorianna Jagfeld, Hosein Azarbonyad, Alex Olieman, Jaap Kamps, Maarten Marx, has been accepted as a short paper at The 3rd ACM International Conference on the Theory of Information…
From insideHPC
Univa Contributes Universal Resource Broker to Open Source Community
Today Univa announced the contribution of its Universal Resource Broker (URB) technology to the open-source community. "Open source software is critical in the modern application container ecosystem and market, where availability…
From insideHPC
CoolIT Systems Teams with Dell EMC as Liquid Cooling Supplier to Enable Greener Datacenters
Today CoolIT Systems announced a collaboration with Dell EMC to provide a factory-installed Direct Contact Liquid Cooling solution to address power and cooling challenges for a wide range of customers, especially in verticals…
From insideHPC
Intel® HPC Orchestrator and OpenHPC: Trends and Directions
Sharing a common architecture, Intel® HPC Orchestrator and OpenHPC are changing the face of HPC by providing a cohesive and comprehensive system software stack. Dr. Robert Wisniewski, Chief Software Architect Extreme Scale Computing…
From insideHPC
Lustre Moves Forward: A Wrapup of LUG 2017
In this special guest feature, Sarp Oral from ORNL writes that the recent LUG Lustre User Group meeting in Indiana has set a new course for the popular parallel file system. “LUG is the premier event for the Lustre community
…
From insideHPC
Dr. Eng Lim Goh on HPE’s Recent PathForward Award for Exascale Computing
In this video from ISC 2017, Dr. Eng Lim Goh from HPE discusses the company's recent PathForward award as well as the challenges of designing energy efficient Exascale systems. After that, he gives his unique perspective on HPE's…
From insideHPC
CEO Quest Names Brent Gorda Managing Director
Today CEO Quest appointed Brent Gorda as Managing Director. Gorda will coach startup CEOs across the globe that lead companies involved in Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning & High-Performance Computing. Gorda…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bot Asks Questions to Test Understanding
Bots test understanding by questioning.
" ... In New Scientist By Matthew Reynolds
Inquisitive artificial intelligence that asks questions about things it reads could be used to quiz students in class. The question-asking
AI…
From The Eponymous Pickle
What Will Smart Mean?
Bottom line, its about how well you can augment yourself. In the HBR, via Accenture:
In the AI Age, “Being Smart” Will Mean Something Completely Different by Ed Hess
Andrew Ng has likened artificial intelligence (AI) to electricity…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
New NIH Data Commons Pilot Phase
The National Institute of Health (NIH), under the Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) program, will be launching a Data Commons Pilot Phase to test ways to store, access, and share FAIR biomedical data and associated tools in the cloud…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Being Charismatic on a Conference Call
Sounds useful.
On a Conference Call, You Have to Act Charismatic (Even If You're Not). Here's How
By treating your conference calls as performances, you can make them not just bearable (though that would be great), but actually…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Anti Showrooming Patent
Wondering various aspects of this.
In ChainStore Age, requires registration.
Amazon granted anti-showrooming patent
Despite the many sales that showrooming has afforded Amazon over the years, the retailer surely doesn't want to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cortana Price Comparisions
Would have thought that Amazon would have tried this as well. Ideal idea for an assistant. I note that it works only on Windows 10, on the not commonly used Edge Browser, not on common mobile devices at this time. So quite…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Reasoning About the World
DeepMind’s neural network teaches AI to reason about the world By Matt Reynolds
THE world is a confusing place, especially for an AI. But a neural network developed by UK artificial intelligence firm DeepMind could help bring…
From Schneier on Security
New Technique to Hijack Social Media Accounts
Access Now has documented it being used against a Twitter user, but it also works against other social media accounts: With the Doubleswitch attack, a hijacker takes control of a victim's account through one of several attack…
From insideHPC
NVIDIA Powers Top 13 Most Energy Efficient Supercomputers
Today Nvidia announced that the NVIDIA Tesla AI supercomputing platform powers the top 13 measured systems on the new Green500 list of the world’s most energy-efficient high performance computing systems. All 13 use NVIDIA Tesla…
From insideHPC
Video: HPE Moves HPC & Deep Learning Forward at ISC 2017
“Today, customer’s HPC requirements go beyond superior performance and efficiency,” said Bill Mannel, Vice President and General Manager, HPC and AI solutions, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “They are also increasingly considering…
From insideHPC
Video: InfiniBand Accelerates Majority of New Systems on TOP500 List
In this video from ISC 2017, Gilad Shainer from Mellanox discusses the company's newest announcements for HPC: New Shield Technology Brings Self Healing to Networks, InfiniBand continues to grow on the TOP500, and how RDMA is…
From insideHPC
ISC 2017 Announces Record Attendance
Today ISC 2017 announced that a record 3200 HPC enthusiasts from 60 countries have registered for the conference. The event also received an international media spotlight, with 60 technical and business journalists on site to…
From insideHPC
Podcast: Intel Omni-Path Rocks the TOP500
In this podcast from ISC 2017 in Frankfurt, the Radio Free HPC team sits down with Scott Misage from Intel to learn why Intel Omni-Path has gained momentum on the TOP500. “Intel Omni-Path Architecture delivers the performance…
From insideHPC
OpenACC Takes Off at ISC17
Today the OpenACC standards group announced plans to showcase new advancements and increasing momentum for their programming model at ISC 2017 in Frankfurt. "OpenACC is a user-driven directive-based performance-portable parallel…
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC Runs Down the Latest TOP500
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the latest TOP500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers. It’s Day 1 here at the ISC 2017 conference, and we’ll be keeping you posted on all the news as the show goes June…
From insideHPC
Video: PBS Pro Manages Workloads at NCI in Australia
Rodger Edberg from NCI presented this talk at the PBS User Group meeting in Las Vegas. "As Australia’s national research computing service, the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) provides world-class, high-end services…
From insideHPC
Podcast: Spectra Logic Report looks at the State of Data Storage
Today Spectra Logic their annual review of the data storage industry. The report provides insight for storage and media manufacturers, application developers and enterprise storage customers into the trends, pricing and technology…
From The Eponymous Pickle
GE and BlockChain to Provide Predix Solutions
As energy markets change, GE, blockchain hope to provide economic solutions
New additions to the Predix platform are targeted at energy traders and grid managers. By Megan Guess
Energy traders are a less visible part of the market…