Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2015
From The Eponymous Pickle
Pitney Bowes and GE Software's Predix
It is nice to see the terms predictive and prescriptive used specifically here, the prescriptive is not that often mentioned. It implies the integration of analytics and specific business process, which is good. Have not looked…
From insideHPC
Altair Announces HPC Cloud Challenge
Today Altair announced a new High-Performance Computing Cloud Challenge utilizing Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Intel technologies to demonstrate the benefits of leveraging the cloud for large-scale design exploration in the …
From insideHPC
Bright Computing Integrates Intel Enterprise Edition for Lustre
Today Bright Computing announced that the latest version of its Bright Cluster Manager software is now integrated with the Intel Enterprise Edition for Lustre software. Systems administrators can easily deploy, use and maintain…
From insideHPC
One Stop Systems HDCA Sports 16 Firepro GPUs
Today One Stop Systems announced its High Density Compute Accelerator (HDCA) with AMD’s newly released S9170 GPUs. The 3U High Density Compute Accelerator (CA16003) provides up to 84 Tflops of peak single precision (SP), 42 Tflops…
From Schneier on Security
Crypto-Gram Is Moving
If you subscribe to my monthly e-mail newsletter, Crypto-Gram, you need to read this. Sometime between now and the August issue, the Crypto-Gram mailing list will be moving to a new host. When the move happens, you'll get an…
From insideHPC
Cray Brings on Storage Experts from Terascala
Today Cray announced it has strengthened its Lustre and overall storage and data management expertise with the addition of key individuals from Terascala, a Boston-based storage company highly regarded for developing easy-to-use…
From insideHPC
Video: Intel Moves Omni-Path Forward for HPC
"The Intel Omni-Path Architecture is designed to deliver the performance for tomorrow’s HPC workloads and the ability to scale to tens—and eventually hundreds—of thousands of nodes at a cost-competitive price to today’s fabrics…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Strategy Drives Digital
Technology is only a collection of tools. But in today's world, with tools being updated every 18 months, sometimes fundamentally, part of your strategy may need to be: look for the best tools.In Sloan Review: " ... …
From BLOG@CACM
Top 10 Myths About Teaching Computer Science
Let's put some evidence behind those summertime faculty email list battles about CS teaching.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
WATCH Talk- New Frontiers in Hardware Security and Trust
The next WATCH talk, called New Frontiers in Hardware Security and Trust is Thursday, July 16, 2015 from Noon-1pm ET. The presenter is Mark Tehranipoor from the University of Florida. Mark is currently the Intel Charles E. Young…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Walmart Plays Prime
I have been involved in a business that leveraged Amazon Prime. It does generate both interest and longer term engagement. It establishes a first visit preference. Is that a form of 'Flow'? Or just a sales play? Now Wal…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Using Customers for Innovation Leverage
In part how our innovation centers were used. HBR article goes on to give more of the how.Win Over Executives by Proving Customers Support Your Ideaby Ron Ashkenas and Daniel DworkinDespite how much has been written about corporate…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Augmenting Human Experience
Augmenting the human experience: AR, wearable tech, and the IoTAs augmented reality technologies emerge, we must place the focus on serving human needs. by Helen Papagiannis. Pointer to a forthcoming book. Augmented Human: How…
From insideHPC
Invest in Supercomputers, Not Chillers
By using Direct-to-Chip liquid cooling, Mississippi State University was able to purchase more servers by minimizing the capital spent to cool the data center. The success of the initial cluster at MSU led to the installation…
From insideHPC
Penguin Computing Announces Extreme Density 1U GPU Server
Today Penguin Computing announced the Relion 1904GT server, which packs four GPU accelerators in a 1U form factor. As the company's densest 1U GPU server, Relion is an exceptional platform for running scientific and engineering…
From insideHPC
Univa Grid Engine Adds Preemption Feature to Increase Cluster Efficiency
Today Univa announced availability of its much anticipated Preemption feature for Univa Grid Engine. Preemption, in combination with Universal Resource Broker, gives users the unprecedented ability to “pause” workload, services…
From insideHPC
New UCX Network Communication Framework for Next-Gen Programming Models
UCX is a collaboration between industry, laboratories, and academia to create an open-source production grade communication framework for HPC applications. "The path to Exascale, in addition to many other challenges, requires…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
BBC Micro:bit Revisited
At the CSTA Conference I had a long chat with Peli de Halleux from the TouchDevelop team about the BBC Micro:bit. Peli has been active in TouchDevelop and the BBC micro:bit. He was wearing one and also gave me a demo of how TouchDevelop…
From insideHPC
Video: Seagate Teams with HP for ClusterStor
"At ISC 2015, Seagate announced that the company has extended its alliance agreement with computing leader HP to equip its high performance computing solutions with ClusterStor scale-out storage capabilities. Building on a proven…
From Schneier on Security
Human and Technology Failures in Nuclear Facilities
This is interesting: We can learn a lot about the potential for safety failures at US nuclear plants from the July 29, 2012, incident in which three religious activists broke into the supposedly impregnable Y-12 facility at Oak…
From insideHPC
DDN Rolls Out World’s Fastest Entry-Level Lustre Appliance
Today DDN rolled out a new entry-level, turnkey Lustre storage appliance at ISC 2015. "As a founding member of OpenSFS, DDN was the first storage vendor to support Lustre and sells and supports more Lustre environments than any…
From Putting People First
The ethics of digital design
Designers, writes Cennydd Bowles in a Design Council opinion piece, have a central role in safeguarding digital products so they not only empower but also protect users. This responsibility starts with designers’ own output. …
From insideHPC
Announcing Bright Cluster Manager 7.1 for HPC
Today Bright Computing rolled out Version 7.1 of Bright Cluster Manager for HPC at ISC 2015. The event will be held July 12-16, 2015, in Frankfurt, Germany. Drop by Booth #920 to see how the new Version 7.1 features help Bright…
From Putting People First
Smart Cities will know everything about you
So, asks consultant Mike Weston, how can marketers cash in without becoming enemies of the people? Wistron writes that the law will be too slow to catch up with digital innovations and that businesses in a smart city will need…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Microsoft Analytics Under Cortana, Adds Apark
Does this imply that their new analytics will be strongly voice driven? Fascinating idea that will require some cognitive depth and context? How will this connect to visualization capabilities like that of Power BI? Will…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Using Twitter as a Social Research Tool
Useful Tools Overview: " ... The popularity of social media sites and the ease at which its data is available means these platforms are increasingly becoming primary sources for social research. Wasim Ahmed presents a quick look…
From insideHPC
Speaker Lineup Announced for OpenMPCon Developer Conference
Today the OpenMP Architecture Review Board (ARB) announced the full line-up of world-class keynote speakers, technical presentations, tutorials and panel sessions to be hosted at the inaugural OpenMPCon Developer Conference, …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Nestle Opens Digital Innovation Office
A number of companies I know have taken similar action. We did this informally for a long time. Such teams should look at a number of global locations: Nestlé is setting up a digital innovation team with staff drawn from the…
From insideHPC
Energy Efficient Supercomputing
While large scale supercomputing centers continue to push the boundaries of the ability to process numerical information, either HPC like or Big Data like, a concern is the ability for the datacenter to power and cool such large…
From Schneier on Security
NSA Antennas
Interesting article on the NSA's use of multi-beam antennas for surveillance. Certainly smart technology; it can eavesdrop on multiple targets per antenna. I'm surprised by how behind the NSA was on this technology. It's from…