Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2018
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Science and Technology links (September 22nd, 2018)
Apple benefits from the chip-making technology of a company called TSMC. This company has surpassed Intel in transistor density. Thus, in some sense, the microprocessors in Apple’s latest iPhone are more advanced than the microprocessors…
From insideHPC
Data Science meets CFD: FieldView Analytics in Engineering
Steve Legensky from Intelligent Light gave this talk at the HPC User Forum in Detroit. "CFD may be complex, but Intelligent Light’s goal is simple: our customers’ success. Intelligent Light solutions unlock the power and value…
From insideHPC
Job of the Week: Software Engineer for Perception Infrastructure at Argo AI
Argo AI in Pittsburgh is seeking a Software Engineer for Perception Infrastructure in our Job of the Week. "With offices in Pittsburgh, the Bay Area of California, Southeastern Michigan and Central New Jersey, we are building…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Book: Great Communications
Reviewing book. Nice thoughts. Podcast at the link.
The Secret to Great Communication: Be Like Aristotle
Author Carmine Gallo discusses his new book about how we can revive the lost art of persuasion.
As a best-selling author,…
From Putting People First
Uninformed consent
Leslie K. John, a behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School, is specialized in the psychology of privacy decisions. In this excellent cover story for the Harvard Business Review, she analyzes why people are so bad at making…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: British Columbia "Squid Run" Is a Tourist Attraction
On James Island. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered. Read my blog posting guidelines here....
From Schneier on Security
New Findings About Prime Number Distribution Almost Certainly Irrelevant to Cryptography
Lots of people are e-mailing me about this new result on the distribution of prime numbers. While interesting, it has nothing to do with cryptography. Cryptographers aren't interested in how to find prime numbers, or even in…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Analytics Translators Needed
Good piece below in DSC by William Vorhies, the role is well described. I did this for many years. Since translation suggests there are at least two 'languages' involved, it means you have to know both the math and analytics…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Goes to Heidelberg!
I‘ve been blogging for the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) for over four years, but I‘ve never actually written in first person. So, hello. I’m Helen Wright, a biologist by training, but I’ve been working in computer science…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Skype Calling Comes to Alexa Devices
This is quote interesting. Could make for some interesting applications for business applications that can use assistants. Part of the Amazon and Microsoft agreement about assistant cooperation talked last year. How about…
From insideHPC
SciNet pushes Scientific Boundaries on Climate Research
In this video, W. Richard Peltier and Daniel Gruner describes how SciNet in Canada is powering climate research. To support vital scientific research in fields as diverse as astrophysics, biomedicine and climate science, SciNet…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
What Makes A Great High School Computer Science Program
Not long ago someone asked on Facebook for great HS CS programs to visit. Three schools came up quickly and repeatedly. Two are large magnet high schools and one was an impressive private high school. I know something about all…
From insideHPC
Video: ExaAM – Transforming Additive Manufacturing through Exascale Simulation
In this video from the HPC User Forum in Detroit, John Turner, Oak Ridge National Laboratory presents: ExaAM - Transforming Additive Manufacturing through Exascale Simulation. "The goal of ExaAM is to develop an AM simulator
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon and the Home
Nicely done Verge piece over viewing what Amazon's hardware announcements yesterday would seem to mean. Taking over the home and all its needs? With links to many of the devices, and to other related Amazon projects, some…
From insideHPC
Debugging for Success and Accelerated Platform Bring-Up
Debugging can prove a substantial challenge, even for experienced engineers. In this video, Soflen Shih, a technical consulting engineer at Intel, discusses the benefits of Intel System Studio and how its built-in functionality…
From Schneier on Security
AES Resulted in a $250 Billion Economic Benefit
NIST has released a new study concluding that the AES encryption standard has resulted in a $250 billion world-wide economic benefit over the past twenty years. I have no idea how to even begin to assess the quality of the study…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
The Specter of Simple(r) Proofs
When has a strikingly simple proof come first? Cropped from London Times 2017 source Michael Atiyah is giving a lecture next Monday morning at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF). It is titled, simply, “The Riemann Hypothesis…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Alexa Presentation Language
Amazon makes a number of enhancements to the Alexa Skills kit. Designed to allow for better customization for Alexa devices with screens. Notably this links to a number of new devices being launched this fall. Quite some interesting…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Scenarios of Autonomous Trucking
Somewhat unexpected scenarios of process for autonomous trucking and the implications:
In SCDigest
Supply Chain News Bites
Supply Chain Graphic of the Week: The Six Most Likely Scenarios for Autonomous Trucks
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
A Roadmap for Artificial Intelligence
Ann Drobnis, CCC Director, contributed to this post. One cannot get through the day without some acknowledgment of Artificial Intelligence (AI), whether it’s something in the news or a direct interaction with an AI system. However…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Echo Auto Announced
Been examining the idea for a long time, the existing systems are operationally touchy. Claim here is it wil operate when car starts. Location-aware. $50. Not quite ready to ship, later this year. Would like to see the integration…
From insideHPC
Supermicro Ai Supercomputer Sports 20 NVIDIA Tesla T4 Accelerators in 4U
Supermicro's new SuperServer 6049GP-TRT provides the superior performance required to accelerate the diverse applications of modern AI. "We see the combination of NVIDIA TensorRT and the new Turing architecture based T4 GPU
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wal-Mart Push Use of VR for Training
Would lead to one of the largest uses of VR, in this case for training. Serious effort, making everyone take notice of the possibilities. What experiments have been done of retail training with VR to show improvements?
Walmart…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Culture
Never heard of the term 'Data Culture', but I do see the point. We should all be thinking about what the data we have, don't have, where it fits for needed goals.
Why data culture matters By Alejandro Díaz, Kayvaun Rowshankish…
From insideHPC
Cray XC50 Supercomputer coming to Institute for Basic Science in South Korea
Today Cray announced that the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) has awarded the Company a contract valued at $9 million for a Cray XC50 supercomputer and Cray ClusterStor L300F storage system. The new supercomputer, paired with…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bias and Fairness in Machine Learning
From the CSIG talk given today:
An instructive experiment which was released for use and experimentation today by IBM. The slides instructive by themselves are here. The complete audio and video of the presentation will be …
From insideHPC
Can we use Machine Learning to Learn about Machines?
In this special guest feature, Ellexus CEO Rosemary Francis writes that the convergence of HPC and Ai is already changing the landscape in the world of supercomputing. "It is only as machines get faster that they are able to
…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing More Fuel-Efficient Engines at GM
Ronald Grover from GM gave this talk at the HPC User Conference. "Ronald Grover his colleagues at GM are using the Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), a US Department of Energy (DOE) Office…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How to Code in Python 3
Passing this along to some friends
Well done, relatively non-technical, especially useful if you have coded in previous languages where you had to construct numeric and related algorithms. lists and structural ... There
The…
From insideHPC
Imagine HPC with the Power of the Cloud
Running HPC in the cloud enables organizations to select and deploy an optimal set of services for their unique applications, and to pay only for what they use. This sponsored post from AWS explores how the cloud HPC market is…