supercomputing

IBM: Smaller, faster, more energy-efficient optics

A new connector that transmits information using pulses of light could replace the copper wires that connect computational cores in supercomputers. IBM's "silicon Mach-Zehnder electro-optic modulator" takes up less space than traditional copper wires--and 90 percent less energy. At speeds up to 100 times faster than wires, it's a likely harbinger of smaller, faster, more energy-efficient supercomputers.

Read the full story at BBC: "Light to shrink computer clusters"

Yahoo launches open-source distributed computing center

In a sign that the web world finally recognizes its debt to open source, Yahoo is opening up an advanced research and development center - with a massive computing lab - to allow developers and researchers to test their systems software. In other words, Yahoo is opening up one of its labs to let people experiment with Yahoo/Internet-scale applications.

This is very cool.

Sunnyvale-based Yahoo said the program is intended to leverage its leadership in Hadoop, an open source distributed computing sub-project of the Apache Software Foundation, to enable researchers to modify and evaluate the systems software running on a 4,000 processor supercomputer provided by Yahoo.… Read more

Microsoft, Red Hat trot out competing cluster software

Microsoft released the public beta of Windows HPC Server 2008 for running large computing clusters, part of its plan to creep into supercomputing.

HPC Server 2008 is the successor to Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003. HPC Server runs on the individual servers in a cluster and also comes with higher-level software that coordinates all of the members of a cluster. Microsoft says it achieved a 30 percent improvement in Linpack, a commonly used supercomputing benchmark, on its production cluster with 2,048 processor cores.

HPC is also being used on a 1,151 node cluster at the Holland Computing Center … Read more

Twenty-six turns all that's required to solve Rubik's Cube

Editors' note: This blog initially misspelled the name of a record holder for solving a Rubik's Cube. He is Leyan Lo.

Clearly, I've been doing something wrong.

Since the early 1980s, when I got my first Rubik's Cube, I've never been able to solve it. Oh, sure, I got one side done, and maybe even two. Or, I could break the thing open and put it back together in its original, solved position.

But now, according to the BBC, a supercomputer has determined that a Rubik's Cube is solvable in less than 26 moves, regardless … Read more

Trivia question: What's the most expensive part in supercomputers?

Making a supercomputer used to require teams of dedicated scientists, millions in federal research grants, and lots of specialized components that took years to design.

Thanks to clustering and other advances, a group of well-trained grad students can build one from off-the-shelf parts. As a result, the rankings in the Top 500 Supercomputers list changes more rapidly than the standings on Dancing with the Stars.

So with commoditization, what's the most expensive thing? The cooling system? The processors?

Weirdly, it's the memory, says Andy Bechtolsheim, senior vice president of Sun Microsystems' systems group and a co-founder of Sun, … Read more

Philips' intimidating uber-remote

We have a love-hate relationship with that ultimate object of masculine obsession, the remote control. On one hand, it's risen to a deified status; on the other, we're sick and tired of having so many of them hiding under every cushion in the house.

Yes, we've tried all kinds of universal models, including the very first version of that brick-like Sony remote whose size was matched only by its price. The best part, of course, is that it was so complicated we never learned how to use it. So as tempting as they may sound, we can'… Read more

Of mice and megabytes

The BBC on Friday ran a piece about a team from IBM and the University of Nevada that has created a model simulation of half a mouse brain on a BlueGene L supercomputer. Well actually, it simulates only a portion of half a mouse brain's cortical cells. And actually, it simulates only a portion of their functionality. And it was able to run at only one-tenth the processing speed of the real thing.

It was still a major accomplishment, though, since they were able to overcome problems surrounding the "tremendous constraints on computation, communication and memory capacity of … Read more

Army funds supercomputing center

The U.S. Army will spend $105 million over five years on a new supercomputing research center based at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. Stanford University will lead development of the research center, with the help of engineers and scientists from NASA, Morgan State University, New Mexico State University and the University of Texas.

The goal of the new center is to test, via computer simulation, various new military applications and hardware, such as wireless communications on the battlefield, advance warning systems for biological warfare, and lighter materials for army vehicles. The research could also prove beneficial … Read more

The Return of Colossus

Which machine started the computer revolution? Some say the ABC at Iowa State was the first computer, but it never got used in a practical way. Others credit Eniac, which wasn't technically first but got the public and government excited about computing.

It's hard to underestimate the influence of Colossus, however. The British-built programmable system at Bletchley Park, England, helped crack the secret codes of the Third Reich and speed the end of World War II.

The MK 1 Colossus was built in 1943 and used 1,500 vacuum tubes to calculate. By June 1944, subsequent Colossus machines … Read more