Category: Computer-Science
June 1, 2010, 04:00 PM ET
Chinese Supercomputer Is Named World's Second-Fastest
The speedy Chinese computer, called Nebulae, is based at the National Supercomputing Center, in Shenzhen. It reached a computing speed of 1.27 petaflops, a rate of one quadrillion calculations per second. The machine is theoretically capable of running at almost three petaflops, the highest speed ever. The Cray Jaguar supercomputer, at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Tennessee, remains the world's fastest machine on record at 1.75 petaflops, though its theoretical peak performance is lower than Nebulae's.
The semiannual ranking, released Monday at the International Supercomputer Conference, in Hamburg, Germany, includes 24 Chinese machines.
The United States pioneered the creation of supercomputers, whose high-level processing capacities are applied to calculation-heavy problems like climate simulation, in the 1960s. With 282 machines on the latest list—the most of any nation—...
Read MoreMarch 11, 2010, 10:00 AM ET
Georgia Tech Students Develop Digital Locks for Shared Bikes
Students in Emory University's bike-sharing program will soon be able to unlock the bikes they want to use by sending a text message. The university will replace its current system, which requires manually checking out a key, with the automatic one, developed by students at the nearby Georgia Institute of Technology.
Each bike in the new "viaCycle" fleet will be equipped with a GPS and locking system. When students or employees want to use a bike, they will send a text message with the bike's identification number to a server. The server will forward the request to the bike and unlock it automatically. After using the bike, the rider will use an attached cable to secure it anywhere and send another text message to lock it.
Five graduate students and one alumni of Georgia Tech's mechanical-engineering program won a $50,000 grant from the Ford Motor Company Fund to create the lock system...
Read MoreMarch 9, 2010, 10:00 AM ET
U.S. Naval Academy Expands Cybersecurity Program
In an effort to better prepare its students for cyberwarfare, the United States Naval Academy presented a plan to expand its cybersecurity program on Monday, the Associated Press reported. According to the AP article, the Naval Academy recognizes that it falls behind the other two major military academies -- the United States Military Academy and the U.S. Air Force Academy --in preparing its students to defend and attack computer systems.
The Naval Academy created a new Center for Cyber Security Studies in December 2009 and now offers cybersecurity internships with the National Security Agency and the National Defense University. The academy is testing two new courses in the computer-science department this semester: "Cryptology and Network Security" and "Computer Forensics." Another new course, "Fundamentals of Cyber Security," is designed for students of any major. Finally, a new club...
Read MoreFebruary 24, 2010, 09:15 PM ET
Professors Find Ways to Keep Heads Above 'Exaflood' of Data
San Diego--"We may already be in the red in terms of our ability to store information," said Christopher L. Greer last week to an interested, and vaguely intimidated, audience of scientists and other academics. Gene sequences, distant pulsar signals, YouTube videos, e-mail -- it's all too much to keep track of.
Or perhaps not. Mr. Greer, who works on networking policy for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, was addressing a session called "Managing the Exaflood" at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It was actually an optimistic gathering, where researchers presented ideas for getting a handle on all this data -- an exabyte is one billion billion bytes -- and using it productively.
Larry Smarr, a professor at the University of California at San Diego, demonstrated a method of coupling genetic sequences from ocean bacteria...
Read MoreFebruary 21, 2010, 08:39 PM ET
A University and a College in China Draw Attention in Google Hacking Investigation
By Mara Hvistendahl
Computer-security experts who are investigating the recent online attacks on Google and other companies have identified two institutions of higher education in China as suspected sources of the attacks, according to The New York Times. If those suspicions are confirmed, it would not be the first time one of those institutions has been linked to an international hacking incident: Seven years ago, a student at Shanghai Jiaotong University, claimed involvement in a 2001 hack that brought down the White House Web site.
While that student and others hacked independently, evidence suggests that administrators at Shanghai Jiaotong and its information-security school knew of the students’ activities. Administrators stood by as students formed hackers groups, organized hacking seminars, and exchanged tips on intrusion techniques.
But that doesn’t mean that the institution...
Read MoreFebruary 18, 2010, 01:38 PM ET
New Center at Michigan State U. Will Study Evolution, Both Natural and Digital
Computer scientists, biologists, and engineers will work together to study evolution in a new center set to open at Michigan State University in June. The university announced Wednesday that it had recieved a $25-million grant from the National Science Foundation to establish the Bio/computational Evolution in Action Consortium, which will be known as Beacon.
Scientists at Beacon will study evolution as a continuing process, and they will conduct research in the field, in labs, and with computers. They will study digital evolution using self-replicating computer programs that imitate natural evolution. Charles Ofria, an associate professor of computer science and engineering at Michigan State who was heavily involved in establishing Beacon, explained the benefits of studying digital evolution.
"When evolution occurs on a computer, we can record every single thing that happens," he...
Read MoreOctober 12, 2009, 01:00 PM ET
Research Bits: Computer Security Inspired by Ants
Research Bits is an occasional roundup of technology research. This week's topics deal with digital ants, seeing the world from an animal's point of view, and collages of the future.
Ants: an Inspiration
Ants. We’ve watched them march around their eponymous farms,
we’ve seen them finish our picnic leftovers, and we’ve had them
crawl up our pant legs. Now they are being used by researchers at
Wake Forest University as inspiration for a new tool that fights
computer worms and viruses, The Daily Telegraph
reports.
After watching the actual insects fight off interlopers using
“swarming intelligence,” a team of software-security developers at
the university created their own “digital ants” (not to be confused
with computer-animated film Antz).
In this program, a digital ant that detects a software bug will
alert his compatriots for reinforcement, just like when the real
critters find a...
September 23, 2009, 05:00 PM ET
Supercomputers Often Run Outdated Software
Washington--Supercomputers keep breaking records for
processing speed, but software to operate them has not kept up with
that increasingly zippy hardware. The often-rickety supercomputing
computer code is becoming an obstacle to making better weather
models, medical simulations, and other applications of
high-performance computers, said experts at a conference here
Wednesday on the future of academic supercomputing.
"Codes are still being used from the 1960s," said Ed Seidel,
director of the National Science Foundation's office of
cyberinfrastructure, in an interview at the meeting. "Those have to
be retooled or rethought" to take full advantage of the latest
supercomputers, he said.
Attendees at the meeting said one of the most popular computer
languages used to create programs for supercomputers is Fortran, which went out
of style among conventional programmers decades ago and is rarely
...
September 10, 2009, 02:00 PM ET
Operators of .Edu Domain Plan to Boost Security
The operators of the .edu domain are planning to enhance
security for .edu Web sites, in a move experts say is long
overdue.
Once the new system is in place, work that is expected to be
completed by March of next year, it should be harder for a third
party with bad intentions to take control of .edu sites protected
by the security system. Called Domain Name System Security
Extensions, it uses a digital signature to verify that the site
being visited is in fact the site it purports to be. People
browsing Web sites will be less likely to be redirected to
malicious sites posing as legitimate ones.
Web sites ending in .edu will be able to opt into the security
system. A spokesman for Educause, a nonprofit group that
operates the .edu
domain in a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of
Commerce, said he expects colleges and universities will quickly
take advantage of it.
Virgil...
September 10, 2009, 10:00 AM ET
Indiana U. to Lead New Supercomputing Network
With a new $10.1-million grant from the National Science
Foundation, Indiana University at Bloomington plans to build an
experimental network to link supercomputers at campuses across the
country to help scientists tackle large-scale reseach problems.
The project aims to create a distributed supercomputer by linking
some 1,400 processors at five universities. The new network will be
called FutureGrid.
Bradley Wheeler, the university's vice president for information
technology, says that the goal of the project is to figure out the
best way to do such networking of high-end computers. The ability
to create faster machines by linking several supercomputers online
could help projects such as modeling climate systems or comparing
DNA segments.
"This whole project hinges on the question, What’s next?" Mr.
Wheeler said. "We are creating an experiment factory to discover
the best...
Each day on Wired Campus, The Chronicle's technology reporters highlight key IT developments and put them in perspective.