High Performance Computing Topic Center

High performance computing (HPC) news, in-depth articles and more

Switzerland to upgrade supercomputer to improve Alps weather forecasts

The Swiss National Supercomputing Center will upgrade its supercomputer with Nvidia graphics processors to enable the system to more accurately predict the weather in the steep mountains of the Swiss Alps.
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New Hybrid Memory Cube spec to boost DRAM bandwidth by 15x

A consortium of 100 vendors will publish a new 3D DRAM spec that by next year will offer data rate speeds of up to 28Gbps for FPGAs, ASICs and ASSPs.

Dell working on ARM supercomputer prototypes

Not fazed by a takeover battle looming on the sidelines, members of Dell's research division are putting together the pieces for prototype ARM supercomputers that could be deployed in the future.

DreamWorks tops compute-cycle record with 'The Croods'

"The Croods" is the most sophisticated 3D film to date from DreamWorks, having taken 15 million more compute hours to render and 250TB of storage to make

IBM: Watson will eventually fit on a smartphone, diagnose illness

IBM executives are working with healthcare systems to perfect supercomputer Watson's ability to diagnose and suggest treatments. And by 2020, Watson could fit on a smartphone.

Oracle sale of Lustre welcomed by HPC users

Oracle has sold assets related to the Lustre parallel distributed file system to high-performance computing storage vendor Xyratex, which has pledged to lead further development of the software in its current collaborative open-source environment.

AI found better than doctors at diagnosing, treating patients

New research by Indiana University shows using artificial intelligence to understand and predict the outcomes of medical treatment could reduce healthcare costs by more than 50% while also improving patient outcomes by nearly the same amount.

IBM supercomputer takes on new role in health arena

IBM's Watson supercomputer has gone from game show king to doctor's office helper.

Mathematician: Finding 17M-digit prime number like climbing Everest

The mathematician who found the largest known prime number said the discovery last month was like climbing Mount Everest or landing on the moon.

IBM's Watson supercomputer goes to college for extra smarts

Watson, IBM's supercomputer that came to fame besting a Jeopardy champion, is going to college, to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, to hone its skills.

Dell simplifies the blade server

Dell's PowerEdge C6220 squeezes four two-socket servers into 2RU, delivering blade server density at a rack-mount price. Insider (registration required)

IT's most wanted: Mainframe programmers

As students study other technologies, vendors try to develop new talent and offer tools to fill the gap for these critical systems

Silver Surfers are past it? Never!

Been around a while? You may well be a "Silver surfer" and that makes you an IT hero!

A New Job for Mainframes?

Mainframes are stable, secure and could be perfect for anchoring a private cloud. But where's the user provisioning?

New job for mainframes: Cloud platform

As companies take steps to develop private clouds, mainframes are looking more and more like good places to house consolidated and virtualized servers. Their biggest drawback? User provisioning is weak.

You don't know tech: InfoWorld news quiz

Feb. 18, 2011: iPhones may get smaller, security firm gets unwelcome caller

The clock is ticking on encryption

The strength of today's communications security is based on the complexity of our encryption algorithms. But the day is coming when cracking those algorithms may be computationally trivial.

How China Will Eat the U.S.'s Tech Lunch

Is Congress really ready to make the U.S the world's No. 2 supercomputing power?

Disruptors have lasting impact on IT

Major market shifts in the database world don't happen often. When they do, they're massive, creating an impact that can last 10 to 20 years. When I entered the job market, it was right at the tail end of the last major shift from the mainframe to client/server.

QuickPoll: Should the U.S. be worried about China's supercomputing plans?

The Department of Energy says China is 12 to 18 months away from building an "entirely indigenous" supercomputer. Should the U.S. be worried?