Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2016
From insideHPC
OrionX Reports Position InfiniBand as the Leading HPI Technology and Mellanox the Leading Vendor
"For now, InfiniBand and its vendor community, notably Mellanox appear to have the upper hand from a performance and market presence perspective, but with Intel entering the HPI market, and new server architectures based on ARM…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
A Device Technologist at the ISCA Architecture 2030 Visioning Workshop
The following is a guest blog post by H.-S. Philip Wong from Stanford University. I just came back from the exciting Architecture 2030 Visioning Workshop, organized by Luis Ceze of the University of Washington and Thomas Wenisch…
From insideHPC
Russia’s RSC Group Receives Intel HPC Data Center Specialist Status
Today Russia's RSC Group announced that the company has received the elite HPC Data Center Specialist partner status from Intel Corporation, confirming the very high level competence of company’s employees and its business experience…
From insideHPC
Supermicro Showcases Intel Xeon Phi and Nvidia P100 Solutions at ISC 2016
At ISC 2016, Supermicro debuted the latest innovations in HPC architectures and technologies including a 2U 4-Node server supporting new Intel Xeon Phi processors (formerly code named Knights Landing) with integrated or external…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Microsoft Betting its Future on AI
Microsoft beyond AI and into how the world is presented in conjunction with data and intelligence.In theVerge: " ... Satya Nadella bounded into the conference room, eager to talk about intelligence. I was at Microsoft’s headquarters…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Three Legs to a Successful Computer Science Curriculum
Summer is a great time to think. I’ve bene fortunate enough to have several opportunities to talk to other computer science teachers this summer. And will have more next week at the Annual CSTA Conference. It seems to me that…
From Phys.org Technology News
Electronic voting may be risky, but what about vote counting?
Several advantages of online voting were identified in a recent post by Conversation columnist and software researcher David Glance who backed the introduction of such a scheme in Australia.
From Schneier on Security
The Difficulty of Routing around Internet Surveillance States
Interesting research: "Characterizing and Avoiding Routing Detours Through Surveillance States," by Anne Edmundson, Roya Ensafi, Nick Feamster, and Jennifer Rexford. Abstract: An increasing number of countries are passing laws…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Reading People
More psych, on reading people. I like the fact that quoted are less university researchers and more people that need read people as a business. Good links to more.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
National Privacy Research Strategy Released
The National Privacy Research Strategy by the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) and Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Program (NITRD) has been released! The National Privacy Research…
From insideHPC
InfiniBand Continues Dominance of TOP500
Today the InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA) and the OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA) today announced that 204 of the world’s most powerful supercomputers accelerate performance through InfiniBand and OpenFabrics Software (OFS). At…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Machine Learning Images from Mobile Video
Continued interest in fast image analysis. Has implications for the perception of images, and thus space and what exists within it.Google acquires image recognition startup Moodstocks to bolster machine learning efforts by Maria…
From insideHPC
CHPC Takes Top Honors Once Again at ISC-HPCAC Student Cluster Competition
Today the HPC Advisory Council announced the final results of the ISC 2016 Student Cluster Competition and the opening of 2017 team submissions. For the third time, South Africa’s Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Engagement and Marketing
Challenging a metric is usually useful. In Adage: Related to project we did.Why Google's 'Time Spent' Metric May Not Be the Best MeasureMarketers Need an Accurate Way to Measure How Their Content Is Performing By Jerrid.…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Science in the Amazon Supply Chain
I worked in the design and implementation of supply chain systems for many years in the enterprise. The following article gives a high level overview of what a category and technology leader, Amazon, is doing in this space today…
From insideHPC
Women in HPC Keynote: Evidence-based Advice on Diversifying the HPC Community
"This workshop aims to recognize and discuss the challenges faced by women, one of many underrepresented groups that exist in HPC, as well as opportunities for broadening participation in HPC fields and activities to encourage…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Nestle Open Innovation Platform
Via Idea Connection. Former colleague and P&Ger Pete Blackshaw is quoted. " ... In an interview with The Drum, Pete Blackshaw, global head of digital and social media at Nestlé, said: '…the way that will work is we will take…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Virtual Reality: First impressions with the HTC Vive
I just got my hands on some virtual-reality (VR) goggles. Specifically, we have an “HTC Vive“. We are still in the early days of VR and given that these goggles cost about a $1000, not everyone will get to try them outside aContinue…
From insideHPC
CFMS in the UK to lead Future Engineering System Research Project
The Centre for Modeling & Simulation (CFMS) in the UK has announced it will be leading the Future Engineering System (FES) Project. FES brings together CFMS, aerospace prime Rolls-Royce, leading global engineering and technology…
From Schneier on Security
Good Article on Airport Security
The New York Times wrote a good piece comparing airport security around the world, and pointing out that moving the security perimeter doesn't make any difference if the attack can occur just outside the perimeter. Mark Stewart…
From insideHPC
Job of the Week: Director IT Engineering and Research Development at University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is seeking a new of Director IT Engineering and Research Development in our Job of the Week. "The Director IT Engineering & Research Development position will be working in a highly collaborative manner…
From insideHPC
Video: Asetek Showcases Liquid Cooling at ISC 2016
In this video from ISC 2016, Steve Branton from Asetek describes the company's innovative liquid cooling solutions for HPC. "Because liquid is 4,000 times better at storing and transferring heat than air, Asetek's solutions provide…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Must and Should Are Not The Same Thing
I came under some criticism for a comment I made on Facebook earlier today. I asked “I wonder how many high schools teach Calc AB to students who have not had math previously?” This is in response to discussion of AP CS students…
From insideHPC
Review of the SGI Management Suite
Properly managed HPC supercomputers can deliver sustained Return on Investment for production supercomputing. To ensure ongoing operations are at peak efficiency, system management capabilities should not only include system …
From Phys.org Technology News
How video can help police – and the public
With three billion camera-equipped cellphones in circulation, we are awash in visual information. Cameras are lighter, smaller and cheaper than ever and they're everywhere, making it possible for nearly anyone to watch, create…
From My Biased Coin
STOC Theory Fest 2017 (Montreal June 19-23)
As SIGACT chair I announced at the STOC’16 business meeting that starting in 2017, STOC will turn into a 5-day event, a Theory Fest. This idea was discussed at some length in a special session at FOCS 2014 and the business meeting…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Single Use IOT Devices
Provoking piece. Thinking of applications like the Amazon Dash as a means to attach to narrow markets. And also thinking about the security. As mentioned, it is about convenience. But also about how that convenience can be…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Zero Knowledge Proofs
Intriguing introduction to zero knowledge proofs using graphs, with implementing Python code. Technical, but worth a look. " ... In this post we’ll get a strong taste for zero knowledge proofs by exploring the graph isomorphism…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF DCL: Exploring Mechanisms to Enhance the Economic and Societal Impacts of Fundamental Advances in Information and Communications Technologies
The following is a Dear Colleague Letter from the National Science Foundation (NSF). July 1, 2016 Dear Colleague, Advances in information and communications technologies (ICT) are addressing a wide range of economic and societal…
From insideHPC
Video: Transtec Delivers BeeGFS for HPC
In this video from the Transtec booth at ISC 2016, Sven Breuner from ThinkParQ describes how the BeeGFS parallel file system delivers performance, reliability, and flexibility to their HPC solutions. Transtec builds HPC solutions…