Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2024
From Computational Complexity
CFG-Kolm-complexity is singleton sets with Lance and Bill
For this post all Context Free Grammars (henceforth CFGs) are assumed to be in Chomsky Normal Form. The size of a CFG \(G\) is the number of rules. We denote this by \(|G|\).
BILL: In my automata theory class I want to do some…From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Scan HTML faster with SIMD instructions: Chrome edition
Modern processors have instructions to process several bytes at once. Effectively all processors have the capability of processing 16 bytes one once. These instructions are called SIMD, for single instruction, multiple data.Continue…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Catch Quotas in Peru
Peru has set a lower squid quota for 2024. The article says “giant squid,” but that seems wrong. We don’t eat those.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered…From Schneier on Security
Security and Human Behavior (SHB) 2024
This week, I hosted the seventeenth Workshop on Security and Human Behavior at the Harvard Kennedy School. This is the first workshop since our co-founder, Ross Anderson, died unexpectedly.
SHB is a small, annual, invitational…From insideHPC
Taking Liquid Cooling to Next Level: Sandia Researchers Say Direct Immersion Technique May Cut Power Use by 70%
.... by directly submergining electrical circuits and components in fluid that does not conduct electricity, Sandia National Laboratories researchers are taking liquid cooling to another level ....
The post Taking Liquid Cooling…
From Schneier on Security
The Justice Department Took Down the 911 S5 Botnet
The US Justice Department has dismantled an enormous botnet:
According to an indictment unsealed on May 24, from 2014 through July 2022, Wang and others are alleged to have created and disseminated malware to compromise and amass…From insideHPC
Livermore Lab and BridgeBio Announce Human Trials for HPC-Discovered Cancer Drug
In what Lawrence Livermore National Lab said is "a substantial milestone for supercomputing-aided drug design," LLNL and BridgeBio Oncology Therapeutics today announced clinical trials have begun for a first-in-class medication…
From Schneier on Security
Espionage with a Drone
The US is using a World War II law that bans aircraft photography of military installations to charge someone with doing the same thing with a drone.
From insideHPC
Pete Ungaro Named to Simr Board
LOS ALTOS, Calif., June 6, 2024 — Simr, formerly known as UberCloud, which provides a platform for using compute resources with simulation tools, today announced the appointment of Peter Ungaro, former President and CEO of Cray…
From insideHPC
D-Wave Extends Agreement with Aramco Europe to Explore Quantum-Powered Optimization of Geophysical Problems
PALO ALTO, Calif. – June 6, 2024 – D-Wave Quantum Inc. (NYSE: QBTS) announced today that it has extended its agreement with energy company Aramco to manage geophysical optimization problems through quantum technologies. Aramco…
From Computational Complexity
The Godzilla Moment
From insideHPC
Quantinuum Launches Trapped-Ion 56-Qubit Quantum Computer
BROOMFIELD, CO, and LONDON, June 5, 2024 – Integrated quantum computing company Quantinuum today unveiled what the company said is the industry’s first quantum computer with 56 trapped-ion qubits. “H2-1’s has further enhanced…
From insideHPC
JPMorgan Chase, Argonne and Quantinuum Show Theoretical Quantum Optimization Speedup
June 5, 2024 — In a new paper in Science Advances on May 29, researchers at JPMorgan Chase, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Quantinuum have demonstrated clear evidence of a quantum algorithmic…
From insideHPC
Eviden Reports on New Contract Wins and Technology (HPC, AI, Quantum, As-a-Service) Updates
At ISC 2024, we were given a tour of the Eviden booth, which – being the focal point at the conference of Europe’s leading HPC-AI systems vendor – was a beehive of activity. The tour began with a business and customer update
…
From insideHPC
Q-CTRL Reports Optimization Problem Records
London, June 5, 2024 – Quantum infrastructure software company Q-CTRL today announced published results that the company says demonstrate a boost of more than 4X in the size of an optimization problem that can be accurately solved…
From insideHPC
NSF Awards Additional $9.8M to NCSA for Delta, DeltaAI HPC
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Illinois was recently awarded $4.9 million of supplemental funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) for Delta and an additional $4.9 million for DeltaAI to…
From insideHPC
Supercomputer Funding for BC Universities in Canada for Research in Health Care and More
June 3, 2024 — The Government of British Columbia and the Digital Research Alliance of Canad are investing over $81M into the supercomputers at Simon Fraser University and the University of Victoria. SFU will use a combined investment…
From insideHPC
Montana State Selects ORCA Computing for Distributed Quantum Computing and Communications
LONDON and AUSTIN, June 5, 2024 — ORCA Computing, a quantum computing company, has been selected by Montana State University (MSU) to supply two PT-1 quantum photonics systems, advancing distributed quantum computing and critical…
From Schneier on Security
Online Privacy and Overfishing
Microsoft recently caught state-backed hackers using its generative AI tools to help with their attacks. In the security community, the immediate questions weren’t about how hackers were using the tools (that was utterly predictable)…
From insideHPC
VAST Data to be Data Platform for Cisco Nexus HyperFabric for GenAI with Nvidia
NEW YORK & LAS VEGAS – June 4, 2024 – AI data platform company VAST Data today at Cisco Live 2024 announced it is collaborating with Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), the leader in enterprise networking and security, and NVIDIA on a solution…
From Schneier on Security
Breaking a Password Manager
Interesting story of breaking the security of the RoboForm password manager in order to recover a cryptocurrency wallet password.
Grand and Bruno spent months reverse engineering the version of the RoboForm program that they…From insideHPC
Northern Data Group Launches Nvidia-based AI Accelerator Powered by Carbon-Free Energy
Frankfurt/Main – 3 June 2024 – Northern Data Group (German stock market: NB2, ISIN: DE000A0SMU87), a provider of HPC solutions, today announces the launch of its inaugural AI Accelerator, designed to fast-track AI innovation.…
From Computational Complexity
FOCS 2024 Test of Time Award. Call for nominations and my opinion
The call for nominations for the Test of Time Award at FOCS 2024 has been posted here.
Eligibility and past winners are here.
Points
1) It is good to have an award that waits until the dust settles and we can see what was really…From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
3 examples of grand challenges that had successful outcomes
In the rapidly evolving landscape of computing, grand challenges emerge as pivotal milestones that shape the trajectory of technological advancement and societal progress. These challenges show the most complex and pressing issues…
From insideHPC
Qumulo Announces AI Infrastructure Benchmark Results with Azure Native Qumulo
SEATTLE – June 3rd, 2024 – Today, data storage and management company Qumulo said it achieved the industry’s fastest and most cost-effective cloud-native storage solution, as demonstrated by the latest SPECstorage Solution 2020…
From insideHPC
Pinecone Names Lauren Nemeth COO ad Bob Muglia as Board Member
NEW YORK, June 3, 2024 – Vector database AI company Pinecone today announced that Lauren Nemeth and Bob Muglia have joined the company as chief operating officer (COO) and board member, respectively. This comes as Pinecone celebrates…
From Schneier on Security
Seeing Like a Data Structure
Technology was once simply a tool—and a small one at that—used to amplify human intent and capacity. That was the story of the industrial revolution: we could control nature and build large, complex human societies, and the more…
From Schneier on Security
AI Will Increase the Quantity—and Quality—of Phishing Scams
A piece I coauthored with Fredrik Heiding and Arun Vishwanath in the Harvard Business Review:
Summary. Gen AI tools are rapidly making these emails more advanced, harder to spot, and significantly more dangerous. Recent research…From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
A Most Important Number
It seems like we’ve been noticing 34 everywhere we look lately, whether it’s on billboards, in phone numbers, or even inside fortune cookies. Is it all just a coincidence? 34 is an angel number (a numeric message sent by your…
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
From Egyptian Survey puzzles to computational thinking
by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London One way to use logical thinking is to deduce new facts but then turn them into IF-THEN rules. They tell us an action to do IF something is true. For example: IF both cards areContinue…