Articles
Bill Dally on Future Challenges of Large-Scale Computing
May 6, 2013 2:01 pm | CommentsBill Dally, who became NVIDIA’s Chief Scientist and Senior Vice President of Research after leading the computer science department at Stanford University, will discuss “Future Challenges of Large-Scale Computing” as the conference keynote address at the 2013 International Supercomputing Conference. The ISC’13 Communications Team recently caught up with him.
Forensics Fiasco
April 15, 2013 3:07 pm | by Randy C. Hice | CommentsThe tragic web of circumstances surrounding the “Blade Runner” Oscar Pistorius and the death of his girlfriend, Reeve Steenkamp, invoke distant comparisons to the “Trial of the Century” (TTOTC) involving O.J. Simpson. Of course, those circumstances are markedly different, but in the final analysis, both involved a high-profile athlete and accusations of murder.
IS0 17025: A Challenge and a Best Practice for Laboratories
April 15, 2013 1:49 pm | by Colin Thurston, Thermo Fisher Scientific | CommentsWhat if ISO 17025 wasn’t a standard, but instead was a technology that automated laboratory best practices? What if following the regulations to the letter — often without even thinking about it — actually led to better overall business performance? In that case, it’s likely every business would aggressively deploy that technology.
A Conversation with ISC Fellow Jack Dongarra
April 10, 2013 3:39 pm | CommentsJack Dongarra is a popular speaker at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC), held each year in Germany. In recognition of his significant contributions to the conference over the years, Dongarra has been named an ISC Fellow. As a lead-in to ISC’13 to be held June 16 to 20 in Leipzig, the ISC’13 communications team posed a few questions to Dongarra on his role in the TOP500 List and the current state of HPC.
Moore’s Law has Profoundly Changed All of Our Lives
March 28, 2013 2:49 pm | CommentsStephen S. Pawlowski is Intel’s Senior Fellow and Chief Technology Officer for the Datacenter & Connected Systems Group (DCSG) and General Manager for the Architecture Group & DCSG Pathfinding. On June 18, Steve will be keynoting at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC’13) and the topic of his talk is Moore’ Law. Here’s a Q&A session between Steve and ISC.
A Terabyte on Your Keychain
March 15, 2013 4:22 pm | by Rob Farber | CommentsThe ability for well-heeled individuals to carry a terabyte of information on the same keychains holding their car keys paints a dramatic picture of the penetration solid-state drive (SSD) storage is going to make in the consumer space in 2013. In contrast to double-digit SSD product growth, the latest quarterly reports from the two major hard disk manufacturers show that demand for spinning disk technology remains flat.
Bridging the Development-to-Quality Divide
March 15, 2013 4:09 pm | by Michael H. Elliott | CommentsAn area of accelerating market growth for electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) technology is in analytical sciences, particularly late state biopharmaceutical development and quality. The large number of ELN users in the un-regulated world of research has inspired organizations to gain similar improvements in efficiency downstream on the R&D continuum.
Dealing with Collinearity
March 15, 2013 3:51 pm | by Mark Anawis | CommentsWilliam James once said: “We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyze them.” Collinearity is a problem that occurs during the creation of regression models. It is the presence of intercorrelation among predictor variables. In other words, it occurs when a regressor is a linear combination of one or more other regressors.
Common Errors in Statistics (and How to Avoid Them)
March 15, 2013 3:38 pm | by John A. Wass, Ph.D. | CommentsIt is always a pleasure to review a book on statistics (bias intended)! Especially one that is well-written, compact and well-constructed for its intended audience. Common Errors in Statistics (and How to Avoid Them), 4th Edition, is written for the non-statistician and can be readily assimilated by undergraduate students with a single statistics class under their belt.
Big Data, Big Science, Big Collaboration: Delivering Connected R&D for Better Value
March 15, 2013 3:26 pm | by Yike Guo, Imperial College | CommentsToday, we are more connected than ever. We live in an always-on world whose digital economy has made data a new form of resource that fundamentally changes our lives. But has this revolution really occurred across R&D domains? At a time when global R&D investment is over $1.5 trillion, leading voices still bemoan a lack of open access to decision-making data and an innovation deficit syndrome.
Fossilized Agate
March 5, 2013 9:20 am | CommentsThis 7x photo shows fossilized Turitella agate containing freshwater snails (Elimia tenera) and seed shrimp (ostracods). It was awarded sixteenth place in the 2012 Nikon Small World Photomicrophotography Competition. Douglas Moore of the University Relations & Communications/Geology at the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point used stereomicroscopy to capture the image.
Fermi's Motion Produces a Study in Spirograph
March 4, 2013 2:00 pm | CommentsNASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope orbits our planet every 95 minutes, building up increasingly deeper views of the universe with every circuit. This image compresses eight individual frames, from a movie showing 51 months of position and exposure data by Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT), into a single snapshot. The pattern reflects numerous motions of the spacecraft.
SC13 Student Cluster Competition Now Accepting Team Applications
March 4, 2013 12:38 pm | CommentsTeam submissions are now being accepted for the SC13 edition of the Student Cluster Competition, a spirited event featuring young supercomputing talent from around the world competing to build and operate powerful cluster computers. The deadline for team submissions is Friday, April 12, 2013.
Structuring Data Management for ELN in Formulations
February 4, 2013 8:03 am | by Michael Elliott | CommentsPharmaceutical formulation is a complex process matching a composition of active and non-active materials with a method of production to create a safe, effective and manufacturable drug product. This product can undergo many iterations as it progresses from early designs for first-in-human (FIH) studies, to large-scale efficacy and effectiveness trials, and eventually to commercial production
Power Optimization in HPC, Enterprise and Mobile Computing
February 4, 2013 7:55 am | CommentsPower consumption is balanced in the technology world by either cooling or battery life. In the HPC world, tremendous amounts of power-hungry computing power must be concentrated in very small spaces to limit speed-of-light delays in tightly coupled calculations
