| PrimeurWeekly 14 April 2008 |
|
|
 |
| |
| Special |
|
|
| Cloud computing is Grid computing with no middleware |
|
Every year or so new terms pop up in ICT. Sometimes they do denote a real new development, more often they are just new marketing terms. Grid computing as a term is already in use for ten years, more recently cloud computing came into use as a new ICT term. Some say cloud computing is brand new, others say it is just Grid computing sold differently. So that is why Gridforum.nl asked Werner Vogels from Amazon to give his view on cloud computing and the relation with Grid computing.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| The new e-Science or better e-Research |
|
At the Gridforum.nl business day, semantic Grid expert David De Roure, gave a presentation titled "The new e-Science" placing the Grid developments in perspective. Because he does not herald Grid computing as the single solution to advance e-Science, he has received a lot of criticism from the "Grid establishment". Is that criticism fair? Read on and you will find out.
Read further... |
|
|
|
Advertisement
|
|
Advertisement
|
|
| |
| EuroFlash |
|
|
| One virtual step for man, one real leap for mankind |
|
Imagine being able to take a step back in time and walk through the streets of ancient Pompeii hours before the eruption of Vesuvius. In April 2008, European researchers will demonstrate that walking through virtual environments is set to be a reality.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Usage of Service Level Agreements in Grids Workshop |
|
As Grids and service-oriented architectures evolved to a common infrastructure for providing and consuming services in research and commercial environments, mechanisms are needed to agree on the objectives and the quality of such service provision. There is a clear trend to use electronic contracts between service consumers and one or more service providers, in order to achieve the necessary reliability and commitment on both sides. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are the means to model and manage such contracts in a unified way. The "Usage of Service Level Agreements" workshop, to be held in Tsukuba, Japan, on September 29, 2008, will provide a forum to present current research and up-to-date solutions from research and business communities. The workshop considers Grids but also generic models for SLA management. That is, market-economic strategies, negotation, or monitoring are also of interest.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Latest advance in Artificial Intelligence: Computer wins a game against a Go Master |
|
During the Go Tournament in Paris, staged between 22 and 24 March 2008 by the French Go Federation (FFG), the MoGo artificial intelligence (IA) engine developed by INRIA - the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control - running on a Bull NovaScale supercomputer, won a 9x9 game of Go against professional 5th DAN Catalin Taranu. This was the first ever officially sanctioned 'non blitz' victory of a 'machine' over a Go Master.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| EMGS adds more Ibrix Fusion to speed worldwide oil and gas exploration services |
|
Electromagnetic Geoservices ASA (EMGS), a market expert in deep electromagnetic imaging, has purchased additional IBRIX Fusion file serving software to support its newest compute cluster, named Aurora, located in Trondheim, Norway. EMGS provides valuable information that helps exploration professionals locate commercial hydrocarbon reservoirs and rank prospects for drilling, reducing the risks and costs of drilling dry holes.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Computation to unravel how genes are regulated and shed light on how cells become different |
|
A closer alliance between computational and experimental researchers is needed to make progress towards one of biology's most challenging goals, understanding how epigenetic marks contribute to regulation of gene expression. This emerged from a recent workshop organised by the European Science Foundation (ESF), "Computational Approaches to the Role of Epigenetic Marks in Transcription Regulation".
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Ad hoc encyclopaedia for the information age |
|
Linking communities and information into a virtual digital library is the 21st century version of theDictionaire Raisonnée. Better, they can be organised around specific topics, creating vast repositories and networks of experts around a single problem. Best of all, it can be done on demand.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| As close as possible to reality |
|
Trucks drive thousands of kilometers through Europe every month, taking oranges from Greece to Scandinavia, delivering Spanish vegetables to German wholesalers, and collecting milk from farms in the region to take it to central dairies. To make sure the tires, wheel rims and other parts will survive the many kilometers without breaking down, the manufacturers test prototypes in test rigs to discover their service life. Such a test often lasts several weeks, yet it can be rendered useless by malfunctions, such as when bearings or sensors wear out. In the Computer Aided Robust Design (CAROD) project, research scientists from seven Fraunhofer Institutes are devising methods with which malfunctions of this nature can be simulated ahead of time. The researchers are using the results to develop sturdy test rigs for life-cycle tests.
Read further... |
|
|
|
Advertisement
|
|
| |
| USFlash |
|
|
| IBM unveils world's fastest UNIX system |
|
IBM has launched two high-end Power Systems models - the world's fastest UNIX server and a unique water-cooled supercomputer. The new systems offer sophisticated IBM virtualization technology and energy-saving capabilities to help dramatically reduce bottom-line operating costs, such as those for energy, floor space and systems management, while improving system performance, helping customers transition to a new enterprise data centre.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| HPC innovator Jack Dongarra to collaborate with SiCortex on computing projects |
|
SiCortex, an emerging expert in compact, low power Linux clusters, will team up with Dr. Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, one of the most influential voices in high performance computing (HPC), on a variety of research projects that take advantage of the company's unique high performance, low power architecture. Jack Dongarra has acquired an SC072 Catapult deskside supercomputer as a dedicated platform for this research.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| NASA deploys Cyber Operations network security software |
|
Cyber Operations Inc. has been working with the U.S. Space Agency on network security and access controls. Today, NASA is deploying the company's patented, leading edge ACL Compliance Director software at the Ames Research Center in San Jose, California.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Star-P On-Demand: easy, affordable pay-per-use supercomputing for the masses |
|
Interactive Supercomputing Inc. has launched a high performance computing (HPC) software service for engineers, scientists and analysts who have technical computing applications that will benefit from parallel processing, but don't have access to high performance, multiprocessor hardware.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| IBM uses water cooling for energy-efficient supercomputer |
|
IBM has introduced a new supercomputer powered by one of the world's fastest microprocessors and cooled by an innovative water system. The new Power 575 supercomputer, equipped with IBM's latest POWER6 microprocessor, uses water-chilled copper plates located above each microprocessor to remove heat from the electronics. Requiring 80 percent fewer air conditioning units, the water-cooled Power 575 can reduce typical energy consumption used to cool the data center by 40 percent. IBM scientists estimate that water can be up to 4000 times more effective in cooling computer systems than air.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| IBM unveils new services to build the foundation for SOA |
|
IBM has launched new services and advanced tools to help customers better focus on the crucial architectural decisions when implementing a service oriented architecture (SOA). A recent study of SOA engagements by the IBM Academy of Technology found that the chief cause for difficulty among clients in implementing SOA is the lack of emphasis on getting the right architecture blueprint in place with an eye to future growth.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Mellanox delivers end-to-end quality of service for unified InfiniBand fabric deployments in data centres |
|
Mellanox Technologies Ltd., a supplier of semiconductor-based, server and storage interconnect products, will provide support for OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) version 1.3, including support for enhanced quality of service (QoS) features over its InfiniBand adapter and switch silicon products, delivering cost-effective and low power unified I/O solutions for data centre applications such as database servers, application servers, virtualized servers, Web 2.0 infrastructures, and high-performance compute clusters.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Mellanox announces industry's first integrated fibre channel over Ethernet adapter with hardware offload |
|
Mellanox Technologies Ltd.'s industry-leading ConnectX EN adapters support Fibre Channel over lossless Ethernet (FCoE) traffic with Priority Based Flow Control (Per Priority Pause). Designed from the ground up as an integrated single chip solution delivering all FCoE functionality, the ConnectX dual-port 10GigE "converged" NIC can reduce the number of adapters, cables, and switches while improving the total bandwidth available with the potential to consolidate all of the traffic types over the same Ethernet link.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Researchers take step toward creating quantum computers using entangled photons in optical fibers |
|
Prem Kumar, the AT&T Professor of Information Technology in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the director of the Center for Photonic Communication and Computing at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, and his research group are one step closer to realizing quantum computer. The group recently demonstrated one of the basic building blocks for distributed quantum computing using entangled photons generated in optical fibers, and their research was published in the April 4 edition ofPhysical Review Letters.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| CAS Inc. reduces development time of Air and Missile Defense programmes by 60-70% with the TotalView Debugger |
|
CAS Inc. has chosen to use the TotalView Debugger for development of its Air and Missile Defense modelling and simulation programmes created for the Department of Defense (DoD). Since implementing the TotalView Debugger, the company has achieved a 60 to 70% reduction in development time, along with a 40% reduction in total programme cost.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Supercomputer creates drugs faster |
|
The development of new drugs has been given a high-tech speed boost by chemists at the Australian National University using a supercomputer. The ability for drug molecules to donate or accept electrons, their redox potential, is a significant indicator of how powerfully they work in our bodies. Through improving the calculations of redox potentials chemists can make better predictions for drug development.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| SGI launches first entry in new generation of visualization solutions |
|
SGI has launched the first entry in the Virtu solutions family, a new generation of SGI visualization systems.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| SGI and Ontoprise deliver blazing performance results on business intelligence applications benchmark |
|
An SGI Altix 4700 server has achieved blazing results with the OntoBroker benchmark. Together, SGI Altix and Ontoprise OntoBroker Inference Engine achieved results that underscore how the uniquely scalable, shared memory SGI Altix platform, combined with the OntoBroker professional inference engine, makes Semantic Web applications a reality.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| HP simplifies UNIX deployment with new operating environments |
|
HP has introduced four new operating environments (OEs) with the latest release of HP-UX 11i v3, Update 2. Designed to simplify UNIX deployments on HP Integrity servers, the new OEs enable customers to reduce costs and accelerate time to solution for immediate out-of-the-box productivity. The OEs are HP-tested and pre-integrated to ease software management from purchase to installation to updates. They deliver fully integrated UNIX virtualization and high availability features, as well as a full range of HP software, with the HP-UX 11i operating system, in a single, easy-to-manage package.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| RIT team simulates first merger of 3 black holes on a supercomputer |
|
The same team of astrophysicists that cracked the computer code simulating two black holes crashing and merging together has now, for the first time, caused a three-black-hole collision. Manuela Campanelli, Carlos Lousto and Yosef Zlochower - scientists in Rochester Institute of Technology's Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation - simulated triplet black holes to test their breakthrough method that, in 2005, merged two of these large mass objects on a supercomputer following Einstein's theory of general relativity.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| StreamScale unveils NumaRAID - industry's first cost-effective InfiniBand-based 4K film storage solution |
|
StreamScale Inc., a provider of high-performance storage solutions for the Digital Media market, has made available NumaRAID, a newly developed high-performance, scalable storage platform based on commodity components that delivers extremely high sustained throughput for uncompressed 4K films stored on RAID6.
Read further... |
|
|
|
| Sun and Fujitsu expand SPARC enterprise server line with new UltraSPARC T2 Plus processor-based systems |
|
Sun Microsystems Inc. and Fujitsu Limited have expanded the Sun and Fujitsu SPARC Enterprise server line with the introduction of two new systems based on the UltraSPARC T2 Plus processor. Scaling from the edge of the network to the heart of the enterprise, the third-generation CMT SPARC Enterprise T5140 and T5240 servers deliver breakthrough performance and scalability and help enable customers to consolidate the data centre into an ultra-dense, energy efficient compute environment, optimized and managed by the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS).
Read further... |
|
|
|
| HP strengthens desktop virtualization portfolio with support for Citrix XenDesktop |
|
HP is planning to support Citrix XenDesktop upon its availability in May across its industry-standard HP ProLiant server and HP Compaq thin client product lines.
Read further... |
|
|
