One of the most popular passwords in 2016 was "qwertyuiop," even though most password meters will tell you how weak that is. The problem is no existing meters offer any good advice to make it better—until now. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Chicago have just unveiled a new, state-of-the-art password meter that offers real-time feedback and advice to help...
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“Build it and they will come” is one way to approach building a supercomputer, but it’s not what the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) did with Blue Waters, the largest leadership-class National Science Foundation supercomputer. Prior to the system going online in April 2013, Blue Waters staff worked with more than 20 science teams to determine a unique, balanced...
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Surgery and radiation remove, kill, or damage cancer cells in a certain area. But chemotherapy—which uses medicines or drugs to treat cancer—can work throughout the whole body, killing cancer cells that have spread far from the original tumor. Finding new drugs that can more effectively kill cancer cells or disrupt the growth of tumors is one way to improve survival rates for ailing...
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A 30-node cluster of GPU-accelerated IBM “Minsky” servers has performed a billion-cell petroleum reservoir simulation in 92 minutes. Previous attempts at this scale required 20 hours using a large supercomputer with thousands of processors. Oil and gas companies rely on reservoir simulations to help figure out the most productive spots to drill. But since these simulations are so...
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Researchers at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and the University of Barcelona (UB) published a paper in Nature Communications presenting a scientific method for identifying, comparing and precisely determining objective differences between large nodes of complex networks. The new method makes it possible, for example, to compare and differentiate the functioning of brain...
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As with many fields, computing is changing how geologists conduct their research. One example: the emergence of digital rock physics, where tiny fragments of rock are scanned at high resolution, their 3-D structures are reconstructed, and this data is used as the basis for virtual simulations and experiments. Digital rock physics complements the laboratory and field work that geologists,...
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Quantum computing is back in the news – this time courtesy of a research team that has published a blueprint for what they are calling “the most powerful computer on Earth.” According to the press release issued on Wednesday, a quantum computer based on this blueprint can be built with currently available technologies and would have nearly unlimited computational power. The announcement sums...
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Compilers are programs that convert computer code written in high-level languages intelligible to humans into low-level instructions executable by machines. But there's more than one way to implement a given computation, and modern compilers extensively analyze the code they process, trying to deduce the implementations that will maximize the efficiency of the resulting software. Code...
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China plans to develop a prototype exascale computer by the end of the year, state media said Tuesday, as it seeks to win a global race to be the first to build a machine capable of a billion, billion calculations per second. If successful, the achievement would cement its place as a leading power in the world of supercomputing. The Asian giant built the world's fastest supercomputer, the...
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The introduction of multicore and manycore processors capable of handling highly parallel workflows is changing the face of high performance computing (HPC). Many supercomputer users, like the big DOE labs, are implementing these next generation systems. They are now engaged in significant code modernization efforts to adapt their key present and future applications to the new processing...
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