Tag: Computer Science

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Boeing steps up focus on computational frontiers

Boeing computing
Boeing’s new Disruptive Computing and Networks organization will focus on using artificial intelligence, quantum communications and computing, neuromorphic processing and other cutting-edge technologies for aerospace applications. (Boeing Illustration)

Boeing is raising its profile on computational frontiers ranging from artificial intelligence to quantum communications by setting up a new organization called Disruptive Computing and Networks, or DC&N, to put those technologies to work in aerospace.

The new organization will be based in Southern California and operate as part of Boeing’s Engineering, Test & Technology unit. Charles Toups is moving over from his post as vice president and general manager of Boeing Research & Technology to lead DC&N as vice president and general manager.

Boeing’s shift aims to stimulate innovations in secure communications, AI and complex system optimization. The move signals that the high-tech worlds of aerospace and advanced computing are increasingly converging, said Greg Hyslop, Boeing’s chief technology officer and senior vice president of Engineering, Test & Technology.

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Another giant leap for diversity in computer science

A year ago, the College Board saw the numbers of female students and underrepresented minority students taking the Advanced Placement exam for computer science more than double — but what about this year?

As Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi puts it, “the momentum continues.”

The statistics don’t quite match last year’s triple-digit percentage increases. But they do show a narrower gap between female students as well as black and Latino students on one side, and male students as well as white and Asian students on the other.

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Quantum computer simulates superconductors

Quantum simulation
A 2,048-qubit D-Wave 2000Q processor, shown in the lower half of this image, was used to simulate the behavior of a quantum magnetic system depicted in the upper half. (D-Wave Systems Illustration)

One of the prime applications for quantum computers is to simulate natural quantum phenomena, and in a newly published study, researchers from Canada’s D-Wave Systems have demonstrated how to do it.

The phenomenon that they simulated involves a topological phase transition associated with thin-film superconductivity and superfluidity. It’s called the Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition, and figuring out how the transition could be done earned Brown University’s Michael Kosterlitz and the University of Washington’s David Thouless shares of the 2016 Nobel Prize in physics.

Today Kosterlitz hailed the quantum computer simulation, which is described in a paper published by Nature.

“This paper represents a breakthrough in the simulation of physical systems which are otherwise essentially impossible,” Kosterlitz said in a D-Wave news release. “The test reproduces most of the expected results, which is a remarkable achievement.”

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U.S. reclaims top spot in supercomputer race

Summit supercomputer
The U.S. Department of Energy says the Summit supercomputer, built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory with hardware from IBM and NVIDIA, is capable of doing 200 quadrillion calculations per second. (ORNL Photo)

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory staked its claim to retake the lead from China in the world’s supercomputer race with a machine capable of performing 200 quadrillion calculations a second.

That 200-petaflop speed is roughly eight times as fast as the current top-rated U.S. supercomputer, built by Seattle-based Cray and known as Titan. It’s twice as fast as the record currently held by China’s Sunway TaihuLight, which is listed at 93.01 petaflops on last November’s authoritative TOP500 list.

Chinese supercomputers have held the No. 1 spot on the TOP500 list since 2013. The next edition of the list is due to come out later this month.

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How to pack a supercomputer in a nanosatellite

Pittcam
The experimental payload known as STP-H6/SSIVP is equipped with two high-resolution cameras and supercomputer-level processing power. (Pitt Photo)

Putting a supercomputer in a package that’s roughly the size of a loaf of bread is one thing. Making sure the supercomputer is radiation-hardened to survive the harsh conditions of space is quite another.

A team headquartered at the University of Pittsburgh is trying to do both, for an experiment that’s backed by the Department of Defense, NASA and the National Science Foundation.

“Computer engineering for space is the ultimate challenge,” Pitt engineering professor Alan George, founder of Pitt’s NSF Center for Space, High-Performance and Resilient Computing, or SHREC, said in a news release.

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Tribe sues Amazon and Microsoft in patent spat

Supercomputer
A supercomputer hums at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation. (NASA Photo / Bill Hrybyk)

A Native American tribe and a small computer company have reportedly sued Amazon and Microsoft, claiming that they’re infringing on patents relating to supercomputer technology.

The lawsuits are the latest twists in a relatively new strategy under which companies assign patents to tribes that can in turn assert sovereign immunity to short-circuit review procedures.

Reuters and CNBC reported that the suits were filed today in federal district court in Virginia by the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe and SRC Labs. SRC, a company founded in 1996 by the late supercomputer pioneer Seymour R. Cray, assigned the patents in question to the tribe in August.

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Supercomputer takes a giant leap in space

Supercomputer in space
HPE’s Spaceborne Computer is installed on the International Space Station. (HPE Photo)

The most powerful computer ever sent into space proved its mettle this month by registering a processing speed in excess of a trillion floating-point calculations per second, a measure that’s known as a teraflop.

“HPE’s Spaceborne Computer is the first high-performance commercial off-the-shelf computer system to run one teraflop at the International Space Station,” Mark Fernandez, Americas HPC technology officer at Hewlett Packard Enterprise and co-principal investigator for the project, said today in a blog post.

The Spaceborne Computer project, pioneered by NASA and HPE, will put off-the-shelf equipment through its paces over the next year to study how well it stands up to the space environment.

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SpaceX sends supercomputer to space station

SpaceX launch
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket rises from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center as spectators watch from Florida’s Space Coast. (NASA via YouTube)

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has sent a robotic Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station with three tons of supplies and scientific experiments, including a supercomputer that could help blaze the trail to Mars.

The Spaceborne Computer project, pioneered by NASA and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, will subject off-the-shelf computer hardware to a yearlong test under the challenging conditions of spaceflight. It’s one of more than 250 science experiments and investigations that will get a boost from the payloads packed on the Dragon.

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2-D magnet points the way to new devices

Chromium triiiodide
This is a top-view depiction of a single layer of chromium triiodide. Chromium atoms are depicted in gray, with iodine atoms in purple. (UW / MIT Illustration / Efren Navarro-Moratalla)

For the first time, researchers have discovered magnetism in the two-dimensional realm of monolayers, or materials that consist of a single atomic layer.

The material, known as chromium triiodide or CrI3, could play a role in new types of memory devices with faster data processing speeds.

A team led by researchers from the University of Washington and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published their results this week in the journal Nature.

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HP Enterprise unveils computer made for Mars

Star Trek and The Machine
In a video tied to the 2016 movie “Star Trek Beyond,” Hewlett Packard Enterprise imagines a time when Starfleet trainees learn about the rise of The Machine. (HPE Discover via YouTube)

What does a prototype computer with 160 terabytes of memory have to do with missions to Mars? The way Kirk Bresniker sees it, a giant leap in computing is required for the giant leap to the Red Planet.

“That’s actually what we need to wrap around that crew,” Bresniker, chief architect at Hewlett Packard Labs, told GeekWire.

Bresniker said the latest prototype in a Hewlett Packard Enterprise research project known as The Machine, unveiled today, represents one not-so-small step toward the kind of computer that could be included on a Mars mission.

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