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 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…
From Computational Complexity
Why wasn't email built securely?
Recently I talked with Ehsan Hoque, one of the authors of the ACM Future of Computing Academy report that suggested "Peer reviewers should require that papers and proposals rigorously consider all reasonable broader impacts,satirized…
From Schneier on Security
Security Vulnerability in ESS ExpressVote Touchscreen Voting Computer
Of course the ESS ExpressVote voting computer will have lots of security vulnerabilities. It's a computer, and computers have lots of vulnerabilities. This particular vulnerability is particularly interesting because it's the…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
On the state of virtual-reality gaming
For nearly two years, I have been trying a wide range of video games in a virtual reality setting. Our lab. in Montreal has some permanent space dedicated to the HTC Vive, so I was also able to test out games with a wide range…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon may open up to 3,000 Cashierless stores by 2021
The data gathered must have produced some interesting results. Now this would change the retail world:
Amazon May open up to 3,000 Cashierless Stores by 2021 in Adage
Sensors and Computer vision Technology
Amazon is considering…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI, Mixed Reality and Analytics Announced at Microsoft
Strong push at AI business applications and notably also their 'mixed reality' methods. I still have not seen enough MR applications for the typical business.
Announcing new AI and mixed reality business applications for Microsoft…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Talk: AI Fairness 360: Python Package
How to look at biases when your making AI driven decisions about people.
Invitation to the ISSIP Cognitive Systems Institute Group Webinar
Slides and Recording: http://cognitive-science.info/community/weekly-update/
Date and Time…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mother of All Demos reprise
Those with interest in the history of modern computing know this event well. The 'Mother of all demos', done by Douglas Engelbart in 1968. He drove home in a single demo what might be done with computers, without the user knowing…
From insideHPC
Video: Cloud-based-HPC Optimization of Manufacturing Processes
In this video, the Fortissimo Project describes their success with Cloud-based-HPC optimization of manufacturing processes. "Fortissimo is a collaborative project that enables European SMEs to be more competitive globally through…
From insideHPC
Video: Energy Efficient Acceleration of RNNs using CGRA
Prof. Aviral Shrivastava from Arizona State University gave this talk at the ARM Research Summit. "Prof. Aviral Shrivastava is Associate Professor in the School of Computing Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering at the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Annoounces Gadget Alexa Tools
Been impressed by what Amazon is doing to support Devs. Still nothing I would call breakthrough intelligence. Waiting for that.
Amazon's new Alexa Gadgets Toolkit lets Alexa have some toy-friendly fun
Robots that can lip sync…
From insideHPC
Cray Supercomputer Powers Japan’s Railway Technical Research Institute
Today Cray announced that it has delivered and installed a Cray XC50 supercomputer and a ClusterStor L300 storage system at Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI), the research and development arm for Japan Railways Group…
From The Eponymous Pickle
In Air Drone Charging
Involved in Drone tech examination and application. Battery charging is a big issue. Below article with video. From IdeaConnection
GET In-Air Drone Charging Station
The GET charging station for drones could offer unlimited…
From insideHPC
Intel Performance Libraries Accelerate Python Performance for HPC and Data Science
Python is now the most popular programming language, according to IEEE Spectrum’s fifth annual interactive ranking of programming languages, ahead of C++ and C. Recent Intel Distributions for Python show that real HPC performance…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Experience is the New Product
Experience Is the New Product; Here's How to Manage It
Organize around customer episodes, improving them through Agile teams.
By Gerard du Toit, Jens Engelhardt, Phil Sager and Karsten Fruechtl in Bain.
More companies now emphasize…