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Exascale Computing and Big Data: Time To Reunite
From BLOG@CACM

Exascale Computing and Big Data: Time To Reunite

It is past time to reunite the big data, cloud, and high-performance computing communities. Each can each learn much from the other.

Little's Law in the Exascale Era
From BLOG@CACM

Little's Law in the Exascale Era

When performance optimization, reliability requirements, and energy management are convolved with component costs, device physics, system software services and...

HPC, Big Data and the Peloponnesian War
From BLOG@CACM

HPC, Big Data and the Peloponnesian War

We need a concord and strategic research investment plan that recognizes the shared importance of HPC and big data. Both warrant investments in basic research,...

My Scientific Big Data Are Lonely
From BLOG@CACM

My Scientific Big Data Are Lonely

Although there are daunting technical challenges posed by big data in science and engineering, the social and economic challenges are just as difficult, though...

Research Data Sustainability and Access
From BLOG@CACM

Research Data Sustainability and Access

The dramatic growth of research data, the collaborative nature of international research, expectations for economic returns, and disciplinary differences all make...

Information Privacy: Changing Norms and Expectations
From BLOG@CACM

Information Privacy: Changing Norms and Expectations

That picture of you at a family reunion, squinting into the sun, can rarely be delimited by a physical location once it is placed on the web. Instead, information...

Explaining Science and Engineering
From BLOG@CACM

Explaining Science and Engineering

As I have followed the international news regarding the Japanese disaster, I have been struck by the challenges each news organization has faced in explaining technical...

Intellectual Amplification via Computing
From BLOG@CACM

Intellectual Amplification via Computing

As the recent performance of IBM's Watson system on the game show Jeopardy! illustrated, the combination of large-scale data, rich algorithm suites and powerful...

Works in Progress: MIA
From BLOG@CACM

Works in Progress: MIA

It is time we extracted a sample of cultural DNA from computing's history and engineered a new generation of contemplative, informal workshops. After gestation,...

HPC and the Excluded Middle
From BLOG@CACM

HPC and the Excluded Middle

Betwixt and between ubiquitous consumer software and the ethereal realm of ultra-high-performance computing, lies the excluded middle, the world of day-to-day computational...

Technology Transfer: A Contact Sport
From BLOG@CACM

Technology Transfer: A Contact Sport

The success or failure of technology transfer depends on many factors. No single mechanism is guaranteed to succeed, though there are many mechanisms that are likely...

In Vivo, In Vitro, In Silico
From BLOG@CACM

In Vivo, In Vitro, In Silico

These “grand challenges” of systems biology encompass almost every aspect of modern computing, from numerical and symbolic methods through data management and analytics...

Consumerization of IT and Research
From BLOG@CACM

Consumerization of IT and Research

When a corporate, government, or university IT department of the 1970s debated an upgrade to its IBM S/370 mainframes, it is doubtful that the IT director was in...

Paucity to Plethora: Jevons Paradox
From BLOG@CACM

Paucity to Plethora: Jevons Paradox

I suspect much of computing is still socially conditioned by its roots in computational paucity to recognize fully the true opportunity afforded by computational...

The Ghosts of Holiday Shopping: Past, Present and Future
From BLOG@CACM

The Ghosts of Holiday Shopping: Past, Present and Future

In many parts of the western world, the frenzy of holiday shopping has reached its crescendo.  With apologies to Charles Dickens, it is instructive to consider...

Smart Grids: Getting Personal
From BLOG@CACM

Smart Grids: Getting Personal

How many electronic devices do you own? It is tempting to answer, “Just a handful,” but the truth is much more nuanced. Here’s a simple experiment that will (quite...

Bridging Cultures For Collaboration
From BLOG@CACM

Bridging Cultures For Collaboration

All too often, our technical curricula fail to focus on the human aspect of cross-domain collaboration. Technical skills are necessary, but not sufficient. One...
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