Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2020
From insideHPC
Groq Hardware Now Available on Nimbix Cloud for AI Workloads
Today Groq announced that the company's tensor processing hardware is now available on the Nimbix Cloud for select partners. The Groq processor is designed specifically for the performance requirements of computer vision, machine…
From insideHPC
Podcast: Sciencetown Investigates Extreme Computing at SC19
In this Sciencetown podcast, we follow experts from around the world to the epicenter of supercomputing - the annual, North American supercomputing conference or SC19. We ask them to weigh in on how the future of computers, artificial…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Allocating large blocks of memory: bare-metal C++ speeds
In a previous post, I benchmarked the allocation of large blocks of memory using idiomatic C++. I got a depressing result: the speed could be lower than 2 GB/s. For comparison, the disk in my laptop has greater bandwidth. Methodologically…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Be Hopeful about the Future
Good thoughts here, with the usual cautions coming from this source.
Pessimism dematerialized: Four reasons to be hopeful about the future
In More from Less, MIT Sloan School of Management’s Andrew McAfee argues that the “four
by…
From insideHPC
Meet the Future at the Supercomputing Frontiers Europe 2020 Conference
Supercomputing Frontiers Europe 2020 is a platform for the thought leaders from both academia and industry to interact and discuss the visionary ideas, the most important global trends and substantial innovations in supercomputing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI for Pizza?
Not unexpected.... classic examples of looking for patterns, then creating efficiency based predictions. Use that to provide the right profitable incentives. Has always been a good place to star, even before AI.
AI… for Pizza…
From insideHPC
Supercomputing the Mysteries of Boron Carbide
Researchers at the University of Florida are using XSEDE supercomputers to unlock the mysteries of boron carbide, one of the hardest materials on earth. The material is also very lightweight, which explains why it has been used…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Theory of Computing
Looks to be of interest, both technical and philosophical. Undergrad view at least, but could inspire people to think about where all this emerging tech and hype is going once again. The word 'Theory' scares many people, but…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Virtual Agents
A broader take than chatbots, more addressed to solving specific customer service issues. We used the term in loose combination with agent-models to deliver goal-specific assistants. Was always important to have very specific…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Seeing in Higher Dimensions
'Seeing' is constructing useful models about spaces from sensors to understand and navigate them. Predict current and future states. A good studey of the idea.
An Idea From Physics Helps AI See in Higher Dimensions
The laws of…
From insideHPC
200G HDR InfiniBand to Accelerate Weather Forecasting at ECMWF
Today Mellanox announced that 200 Gigabit HDR InfiniBand has been selected by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) to accelerate their new world-leading supercomputer, based on Atos’ latest BullSequana…
From The Eponymous Pickle
US Treasury Tracking Federal Grants
Novel look to track and verify activity on grants. Testing an innovation.
US Treasury Department testing blockchain tech for tracking federal grants in TheBlockCrypto
The U.S. Department of the Treasury, which manages government…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Program Associate Position Open
The Computing Research Association (CRA) seeks a highly motivated individual to serve as a Program Associate for the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) subcommittee. The program associate works closely with the CCC Director…
From insideHPC
Exxact Teams with Panasas for Turnkey HPC Storage Clusters
Today Exxact Corporation announced the company is joining the Panasas Accelerate Channel Partner Program. Exxact will become a key distributor and integrator for the Panasas ActiveStor Ultra product line, providing installation…
From insideHPC
ScaleMP and AMD Benchmark Best-in-Class Large-System Performance on SPEC CPU 2017
Today ScaleMP announced that it has accomplished best-ever recorded results for the SPEC CPU 2017 benchmark for any system size of four processors and higher. ScaleMP’s results for 32-, 24- and 16-processor systems are now holding…
From insideHPC
2020 Predictions from Radio Free HPC
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team lays out their tech predictions for 2020. "Henry predicts that we’ll see a RISC-V based supercomputer on the TOP500 list by the end of 2020 – gutsy call on that. This is a double down
…
From Schneier on Security
Securing Tiffany's Move
Story of how Tiffany & Company moved all of its inventory from one store to another. Short summary: careful auditing and a lot of police....
From insideHPC
Video: FPGAs and Machine Learning
James Moawad and Greg Nash from Intel gave this talk at ATPESC 2019. "FPGAs are a natural choice for implementing neural networks as they can handle different algorithms in computing, logic, and memory resources in the same device…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Codemakers vs Codebreakers
Abstract below. Amazing how much ew are now tied to cryptography, and the question is not resolved. With the emergence of quantum it may become more complex yet. Abstract:
Technical Perspective: Was Edgar Allan Poe Wrong After…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Advances for 500 million Google Assistants
Seems like good ideas. Felt that Google was falling behind, even though it AI capabilities seem deep. I want to be impressed by integrated AI. To be shown things that are really useful when finding, using and manipulating…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Qualcomm Self Driving Chips
More indications that the winter is not that chill, AI being embedded in chips for general use/. This did not happen during the last winter.
Qualcomm Announces Chips ....
Qualcomm, which also makes modems and other technologies…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On the Cusp of an AI Winter?
We have done lots of new things like better language skills and pattern recognition. But we have fallen back on delivering real process intelligence. Circa 1990, the last 'winter' created a stall that lasted some 20 years…
From insideHPC
WekaIO Accelerates 5 Million Genomes Project at Genomics England
Today WekaIO announced that Genomics England (GEL) has selected the Weka File System (WekaFS) to accelerate genomics research for the 5 Million Genomes Project. "We needed a modern storage solution that could scale to 100s petabytes…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bosch Deploys AI to Prevent Attacks on Car Electronics
Shielding car electronics attacks. Note the application to data coming from car systems.
Bosch Deploys AI to Prevent Attacks on Car Electronics
By The Wall Street Journal
January 13, 2020
German engineering company Robert Bosch GmbH…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Halting Is Poly-Time Quantum Provable
How does this intersect David Deutsch’s thoughts in 1985? Composite crop from homepages Zhengfeng Ji, Anand Natarajan, Thomas Vidick, John Wright, and Henry Yuen (JNVWY) have just posted a paper titled . The title means that…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF’s Big Ideas
The following is a letter to the community from Erwin Gianchandani (Acting Assistant Director) and JD Kundu (Acting Deputy Assistant Director) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate of Computer & Information Science…
From insideHPC
Apply Now for ISC Travel Grant and Student Volunteer Programs
Early career researchers and university students are encouraged to take advantage of the ISC Travel Grant and the ISC Student Volunteer programs. The programs are intended to enable these participants to attend the ISC 2020 conference…
From insideHPC
Reducing the risk of blood clots by supercomputing turbulent flow
People with mechanical heart valves need blood thinners on a daily basis, because they have a higher risk of blood clots and stroke. With the help of the Piz Daint supercomputer, researchers at the University of Bern have identified…
From insideHPC
Jack Dongarra to Receive 2020 IEEE Computer Pioneer Award
Dr. Jack Dongarra from the University of Tennessee has been named to receive the IEEE Computer Society’s 2020 Computer Pioneer Award. "The award is given for significant contributions to early concepts and developments in the…
From insideHPC
Deep Learning State of the Art in 2020
Lex Fridman gave this talk as part of the MIT Deep Learning series. "This lecture is on the most recent research and developments in deep learning, and hopes for 2020. This is not intended to be a list of SOTA benchmark results…