Top 10 Speediest Supercomputers in the World

The computer you're using to read this is more powerful than supercomputers of yore. But today's supercomputers are so fast, the cool kids call them "slow." Take the processor in a laptop, multiply it by thousands, stack them in racks, link them through a lightning-fast network and you have a supercomputer.

10. SGI Altix ICE 8200EX-The SGI Altix system in Pau, France, has a capacity of 106.1 teraflops (one teraflop = one trillion operations per second). This supercomputer is run by Total Exploration Production and is the largest system housed with an industrial customer, according to Top500.org.
9. BlueGene/P at IDRIS -The BlueGene/P Solution system at the Institut du Développement et des Ressources en Informatique Scientifique in Orsay, France, is just one of many IBM systems on the list. IDRIS works in partnership with another supercomputer center in Montpellier to offer its capabilities to the national scientific community.
8. EKA- This is the second year a supercomputer in India has broken the top 10. ஏக, which means number one in Sanskrit, runs on a Hewlett-Packard system at Computational Research Laboratories, a subsidiary of Tata Sons in Pune, India. Tata Group is the largest conglomerate in India, bringing in $55 billion annually.
7. Encanto - This system, at the New Mexico Computing Applications Center (NMCAC) in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, was built by SGI. According to an article in the United Kingdom's Register earlier this year, Encanto was being housed at an Intel facility (Intel made most of the processors in the Top500 list).
6. JUGENE -This computer, at the Jülich Research Centre (FZJ for short in German), in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany is yet another that runs on IBM's BlueGene system. Back in the day, Jülich had three nuclear reactors for research, but they have all since been closed.
5. Jaguar - The Jaguar supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., was built by Cray. If the name sounds familiar, that's because Seymour Cray dominated the computing world from the 1960s through the 1980s.
4. Ranger - Unlike the other supercomputers at the top of this list, Ranger is a system intended to be open. Sun Microsystems worked with the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas and a team of academic institutions to build Ranger, which has one-half a petaflop (the next step up from teraflop) capacity.
3. BlueGene/P at Argonne - Another Big Blue system is the BlueGene/P at Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill. Argonne, along with Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Lawrence Berkeley, was part of the Manhattan Project, which developed the nuclear bomb in the 1940s.
2. BlueGene/L - IBM's BlueGene/L system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., is nothing to sneeze at. It can do 478.2 trillion operations in a second, which it does in collaboration with Los Alamos and Sandia. BlueGene/L can run nuclear computer simulations, replacing underground testing.
1. Roadrunner - Roadrunner became the first computer ever to reach the one petaflop per second level. Translation: it can do one thousand trillion calculations in the blink of an eye. That's 15 zeroes. That's so fast, even analogies can't touch it. Roadrunner, named after New Mexico's state bird, is operated by Los Alamos National Laboratory. IBM designed and built the record-breaking system, which will be used to do energy, astronomy, climate, human genome research, and to keep the nation's nuclear stockpile safe. Beep-beep.

Upgrading Humans - Tracy Staedter chats with Desney Tan, Microsoft Research

Its Quite Long. But Very Interesting one.

3:30

PMimtracynotstacy: hi Desney
yensed: Hey Tracy, how's it going.
imtracynotstacy: It's going well.
yensed: Cool. 3:32 PM
imtracynotstacy: thanks for taking this time for me
yensed: No problem... This is a fun medium.
imtracynotstacy: So. I'd like to start out by just asking where you are. What city?
yensed: I'm in Redmond right now, in my office here.... Redmond, WA.
imtracynotstacy: And could you describe your work for me....in 10 words or less? (keeping with the spirit of IM) 3:35 PM
yensed: 10 words? Oops, I just used them up...
imtracynotstacy: try again, please :)
yensed: I see myself as working hard to upgrade humans. Augment ourselves with technology, if you will.
imtracynotstacy: and what tools do you use to do that? or maybe I should ask, what technologies?
yensed: Well, we believe that there is a lot of potential to be harvested from interfacing directly with the human physiology... So we've done a lot of work with brain-computer interfaces, using brain-sensing devices to infer what's going on in our brains, which can be pretty useful in a variety of situations.

3:36 PM

We've also done quite a bit sensing muscles, and other parts of the body. Many of the technologies we use utilize very simple electromagnetic sensing, since the human body is a pretty prolific generator of these signals.

3:37 PM
imtracynotstacy: do you conduct your work from your office? Or do you also have a lab?
yensed: We have quite a few resources here... Much of it, we do in the office, some in labs around the company. We also collaborate a lot with academic institutes and do a lot of work remotely too.
imtracynotstacy: the stuff you are talking about sounds very cyborg-ish 3:40 PM upgrading humans and all
yensed: Yes, I would claim we are already "cyborgs" (in your terms). We've spent a good deal of our history crafting technology augmentations to ourselves... Language (both spoken and written), and more recently, computers, cell phones, etc.
imtracynotstacy: yes, lots of people have their cell phones attached to their heads, so to speak
yensed: I'm very influenced by the Distributed Cognition movement, which proposes that in order to understand the human and human cognition, we have to understand ourselves in the context of our environments.

3:43 PM
imtracynotstacy: how do you want to upgrade humans? and why?
yensed: Well, I'd like for the computer-human interface to become much more natural than it currently is. We can still (mostly) tell the boundary between computer and human, and I believe this makes the overall system less effective than it could be. I think when the two systems become seamlessly integrated we will start to hit the potential of computing.
imtracynotstacy: What do you mean "much more natural?"
yensed: For example, with the brain-computer interface work, one thing we'd like to do is to provide a method for a computer to better understand the current state of humans so that it can act appropriately.
imtracynotstacy: could you give me an example of an application for a computer that can understand the state of a human?
yensed: Right now, my machine has no idea that I'm in a conversation (even though it should). It doesn't know I'm thinking really hard (yes, I am) to answer your great questions. E-mail just came in in the other window and interrupted me for a sec. My machine should've known better. 3:45 PM
imtracynotstacy: and what would a machine do with that knowledge, if it knew?
yensed: Interruption mediation based on my mental state is just the start of things. We know that interruptions are highly costly, and we can avoid them, but fixing existing problems is only half the fun... Imagine if the computer could help me absorb/process more information because it knew more about me, or more about my current mental state. Wouldn't that be nice?
imtracynotstacy: sort of like a personal assistant that can read your mind?
yensed: Yep, you could say that.

3:48 PM
imtracynotstacy: okay, so how do you get to that stage?
yensed: Well, currently, we hook people up to brain-sensing devices such as Electroencephalographs (EEG) that sense voltages on the scalp. These are pretty good indicators of activity in the brain. The readings are really noisy though, since the brain is quite complex, and the signal has to come through your skull and scalp. So we have to use quite a bit of computational power to process the signals and make sense of it all.
imtracynotstacy: and what activity are you seeing? sensing?
yensed: We have shown that, even with fairly low-end equipment (which is important cause we'd like this to be useful to the masses), we can sense different mental activities (e.g. doing math in your head vs. thinking of objects vs. doing nothing). 3:50 PM We've also shown we can measure/infer how hard you're thinking... This is important if you want to know how hard a task is (e.g. using a new interface or doing a new task), so that we can design our systems appropriately.
imtracynotstacy: so my computer could possibly tell the difference between when I'm doing nothing and when I'm typing or thinking, right?
yensed: Yep. We can do that, even if there are few external cues (if there are external cues, we could sense those too, without brain gear).
imtracynotstacy: why did you get into this kind of work?
yensed: Have always been interested in the human brain/body, and have always been interested in computing (which is what I'm formally trained in). I think there's opportunity for very large impact in this space. Also, I like working on problems that people call impossible (or at least difficult), and hooking technology up to brain and body certainly fall into that category of stuff. I'm also a little of a sci-fi geek I guess, and what better way to spend my time than creating some of the fantasy.

3:52 PM
imtracynotstacy: If you could let your sci-fi imagination run wild, what could you hope/dream might become of this area of research? And then what is the reality?
yensed: It's all reality, or can be. I think that a much better understanding both of ourselves (physiologically as well as philosophically), but also the knowledge of how to leverage that understanding and increase our effectiveness at operating within the world.

3:55 PM
imtracynotstacy: could you give me a concrete example of a possibility of this technology?
yensed: I love a bunch of the work being done with prosthetics for example. Lose an arm? We can graft a robotic one on, rewire some of the nerves (or brain) and you're good to go, mostly anyways. Amazing stuff.
imtracynotstacy: What do you imagine this technology could offer?

3:58 PM
yensed: Now, I talk about the 3 stages of media (since I came out of lab at CMU called Stage 3). Stage 1: show proof of concept that it works at all. Stage 2: Emulate existing technologies (or capabilities) Stage 3: Do new stuff with the technology. We're in Stage 2 with prosthetics, but imagine when we start giving healthy people a third arm. Or forth or fifth. 4:00 PM How do we change our humaness (humanity)?
imtracynotstacy: wow. talk about augmentation!
yensed: It takes a little creativity to get into Stage 3, but oftentimes, that leads to massive changes (and improvements) to the way we live.
imtracynotstacy: yeah, but having a mobile phone that downloads stream video for example is nothing compared to a third arm...I mean, that feels like....I dunno...evolution
yensed: Maybe. But have you seen all the great stuff that mobile phones are enabling in the developing world? Medical care, business/commerce, education... No less impressive than my third arm.

4:02 PM
imtracynotstacy: okay.....good point so where do you get your inspiration?
yensed: Everywhere.
imtracynotstacy: like?
yensed: Everytime someone says "I wish I could...." that inspires me.
imtracynotstacy: when's the last time someone said that?
yensed: Just this morning, my wife said "I wish I could sense the weather like animals can" (it snowed here this weekend, which is fairly, no, very, unusual). Why not? We're working on a project called "computational senses" which proposes that we can let people sense information that they would normally have to read on a computer.

4:05 PM
imtracynotstacy: like weather?
yensed: Like weather... What about traffic? The mood of my boss... Maybe the state of my health, so that I felt a little different when I'd eaten something unhealthy or not exercised enough for the week. We assert that people can integrate quite complex streams of information into their decision-making and behavior very effectively and very quickly (in a process commonly known as brain plasticity).
imtracynotstacy: very cool
yensed: Often times, the information is out there, we just don't have seamless ways of getting to it, and continuously. Personal health feedback is one that interests me greatly (what with my interest in the human body and keeping it working). Continuous health monitoring and feedback could do wonders for the way we live.

4:07 PM
imtracynotstacy: so are you talking about some kind of device a person would wear that would monitor their health and give them feedback about what they should eat or exercise?
yensed: Could be... One project we're starting to work on in collaboration with some really awesome researchers at the University of Washington is to build health-sensing right onto contact lenses.
imtracynotstacy: could you say more about that?

4:10 PM
yensed: Contact lenses are pretty cool, cause they actually come into contact with tears, which carry some of the same information as blood, but they don't require pricking my skin. Prof Babak Parviz out at UW has developed technology to flexibly fabricate circuits on all sorts of surfaces (e.g. contact lenses). So you could put a display right on your eye, but you could also have continuous sensing without having to draw blood.
imtracynotstacy: and sense stuff like diabetes? cholesterol? stuff like that? AIDS?

4:13 PM
yensed: We're going after glucose sensing initially cause it's pretty high impact. But there are many markers that have been shown to be measurable in tears, and I'm guessing many others waiting to be discovered. We haven't thought about AIDs, but now you're getting into it... We (or someone) probably should.
imtracynotstacy: It's really fascinating!
yensed: Fun stuff...
imtracynotstacy: I'm wondering about HOW you do your work? Like, if you look around your office right now, do you have tools of your trade sitting around?
yensed: Yes Let's see... I have an EEG unit (and a bunch of sensors) sitting to my right. Couple of joysticks and whacky input devices.

4:15 PM

Lot'sa styrofoam heads up on my shelf (I'm really not obsessed, so much as very enthusiastic about what I do) Couple of models of brains, obviously lot'sa books, papers...
imtracynotstacy: what are the heads for?
yensed: Well, I had an intern a few years ago who decided that he would purchase a bunch of heads to decorate his office. Turns out they were very useful to use as a reference when talking about a head. When two people are chatting, it's hard to point on one or the other of their heads. So we use the model. We can also poke at it, like we wouldn't quite want to do on a human.
imtracynotstacy: same with the brains, I suppose?

4:17 PM
yensed: Yeah. Oh, and if you look at my floor, you'll see a whole bunch of colored balls, much like the kids ball-room at Ikea.
imtracynotstacy: what are those colored balls for?
yensed: Sometimes we through stuff at each other or shoot nerf guns... It's an environment we've crafted to be fun, cause our jobs are intrinsically a creative endeavor (in addition to the science).

4:20 PM

Much of research is about thinking differently. And we can't really do that if we're sitting in cubes, hunched over computer terminals all day. I consulted with Disney years ago, and they knew how to have fun, and make fun. And as a result they were some of the most creative people in the world (I claim). Again, same theme. We can affect our behavior by crafting the environment, and the technologies we surround ourselves with. And if we do it right, we affect it in positive ways.
imtracynotstacy: I could imagine that you could spend a lot of time thinking about what to surround yourself with in order to maintain the level of creativity. That could be someone's job, in a way....
yensed: Could be, but the act of building our environment is in and of itself a creative process and creativity breeds more creativity, so we enjoy doing it.
imtracynotstacy: And what's a typical day like for you?

4:22 PM
yensed: There are no typical days. Wake up, rush into work usually in an excited frenzy. Build new (and hopefully cool) stuff. We do a lot of experiments as well, much like you would see in a phsychology or neuroscience lab. A lot of brainstorming.
imtracynotstacy: so are you getting ready for lunch now?
yensed: I'm about to have to run off to a brainstorm in a few minutes. We're trying to figure out how we can improve medical care by improving the hospital experience.
imtracynotstacy: Ok. Well, thanks for your time. good luck with channeling that creativity bye for now
yensed: You betcha, latah .

4:25 PM
Courtesy: Discovery

Exclusive: The Bill Gates Exit Interview

Bill Gates sat down with Michael Miller to discuss his role in the tech world over the past 30 years, and what the future holds for him—and for us.

At the end of the month, Bill Gates is stepping down as chief software architect of Microsoft, and retiring from his day-to-day role at Microsoft, the company he co-founded and led for most of the past 30 years. Michael J. Miller, former PC Magazine Editor-in-Chief, sat down with him to look back at how the computer industry has evolved over that time, and where it is headed.

Part I: Hits and Misses
Michael Miller: From a technology standpoint, what would you say is your biggest success? Was it making the PC popular or the graphical user interface?
Bill Gates: The most important thing is the creation of the software industry and the importance of having this platform that anybody can write to. That goes back to Microsoft Basic on the Altair, the Commodore PET, TRS-80, Atari 800, Apple II—building up a library of programs that people use to get something done.
There was no software industry before the PC came along. The whole magic was that computers became so cheap, and you need a lot of software, so people can sell software in volume and price it quite reasonably. That magic of high volume, low price just wasn't possible in an era with a very modest number of very expensive computers. Most companies that did software did it as a sideline before we came along.
Basically we take that idea of a whole software industry, and we ourselves do some of the big things. We evolved the platform of the software industry from Basic to DOS; from DOS to Windows; from Windows to .Net Internet; to modeling, cloud computing, natural user interface…
The platform is changing because of the hardware improvements and the kind of scenarios that are possible. It's just so different. We are about building a software platform and a software company.
M: Over the years, you have also talked about a number of technologies that you thought were going to be successful but haven't reached mainstream appeal as much as I think you thought they would: SPOT, tablet PCs, speech recognition, stuff like that. What do you think it is: a software or hardware problem, or just society? Why did some things become incredibly popular and some things stay more or less as niches?
B: Look what was written down from when Paul and I started Microsoft. Half the things we dreamed of as scenarios for software to solve are still in front of us.
Natural interface including speech, and the kind of inking that comes out on the tablet. My prognosis, you can call it stubbornness, is simply that it is not ready for the mainstream yet. We have to keep improving the software and hardware. But I have no doubt that the current way we interact—which is overwhelmingly a keyboard and mouse way—in the next decade will be changed deeply. Not that it will go away, but it will be supplemented by speech, vision, ink-type things. And this is the kind of issue where Microsoft gets to put billions of dollars behind those beliefs.
The tablet: it's taken off in some niches. There are millions sold a year, but not tens of millions. My belief is that we will get to hundreds of millions. So we are a factor of 100 away from what I wanted to happen and I believe will happen, where every student instead of having paper textbooks has this great device connected to the Internet that allows them to edit, create, record voice, browse, in this very deep way.

- From PC magazine

The Ultimate USB Key

The USB key is used mainly as a kind of digital briefcase—a place to store various files while you carry them from one location to another. And that's fine; it's what a USB key was made for. The thing is, there are also plenty of applications that you can load onto a USB drive, and they could make your life much easier. With some advance planning and setup, your USB drive can be more than a briefcase; it can be a powerful tool that keeps you fully connected and functional when you're on the road without your laptop.

Most of these applications require very little space; you can run them all from the same 2GB USB key. But given the low cost of 8GB drives like the Kingston DataTraveler 100 ($111 list, www.kingston.com), we recommend a little extra room. And when we say running these apps, we mean it; they can all—absolutely all—live at the same time on the same USB key, since everything uses a FAT file system (even the Linux install). Set aside 30 minutes and you'll discover that, yes, you can take it with you.

Securing Your Information

Various applications allow you to create a secure area on the USB key where you can safely store data in encrypted formats. The secure storage area gets a drive letter of its own in Windows Explorer and can be accessed only by entering a password. We went with NTI Ninja ($29.99, www.ntininja.com, ), which easily installed itself to a USB key. There is, however, a disadvantage to programs like this: They require you to reformat your USB key to create the secure area, destroying any data that's already on the drive. So if you choose Ninja, make sure it is the first program you install. An alternative program that password-protects only selected folders is Folder Lock, which combines a silly-looking interface with clear, simple operations, like the ability to copy itself to your USB key so it's available wherever you go. ($35, www.newsoftwares.net, )

Run Linux

QemuPDL combines a compact version of Linux called Pendrive Linux and the open-source QEMU virtual-machine emulator software to create a virtual Linux PC that runs in a window on virtually any current Windows system. Your USB drive can include any other portable Windows software. The software takes 2 or 3 minutes to load and provides a full-featured Linux setup that connects to the Internet through the host PC's connection. The Epiphany Web browser is included, but you can install Firefox and any other Linux software you choose.
The same Pendrivelinux.com Web site offers another version of the same distro that lets you boot the host PC into Linux if the machine is set up to boot from a USB key. (Search the Web for "boot windows USB" to find tutorials for setting up Windows to boot from a USB key, but be prepared to spend a day or two trying to follow them.) Plenty of other Web sites offer tutorials for installing Linux on a bootable USB key, but this is the only one I've found that makes it effortless. Simply download the 400MB installer, extract the files to the USB key, and then click on an icon to make the drive bootable. The drive doesn't need to be reformatted, so you can still use it to store Windows programs. The Web site provides step-by-step instructions for partitioning the USB key so that part of it is used for a Linux-only partition that can save settings between Linux sessions. We found the whole process surprisingly easy. (Free, www.pendrivelinux.com).

Hacked Through the Heart

Researchers have demonstrated that implantable defibrillators and pacemakers can be hacked from the outside, leading to all manner of undesirable outcomes.

It's not surprising that implantable devices are programmable through a wireless interface. This capability lets a physician adjust a device's settings without opening the patient up. But it's also not surprising that the wireless interfaces and programming protocols were not sufficiently hardened against deliberate attack. Such attacks could cause the device to shock or mistime, but could also deplete the battery.

In addition, the researchers investigated potential defenses against such attacks, and their report is encouraging (>www.secure-medicine.org/icd-study/icd-study.pdf). They stress repeatedly that these attacks are, so far, only theoretical, and that patients with such devices should not be concerned at this point.

The authors of this study did the hard research, but the basic approach to body hacking was suggested by Gadi Evron in a 2007 talk entitled "Hacking the Bionic Man." As Evron speculated, devices like pacemakers could be just a foot in the door of our bodies. By 2040 we may be much more bionic, and we'll need to know that our electronic parts are secure.

Google's mobile phone plans hit delays

New mobile phones being developed by Google Inc (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and more than 30 partners based on software called Android will arrive in the fourth quarter, a schedule that some cellular carriers and program makers are struggling to meet, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
Google had said in November that the phones would come out by the second half of 2008, the Journal reported.
Deutsche Telekom's (DTEGn.DE: Quote, Profile, Research) T-Mobile USA expects to deliver an Android-powered phone in the fourth period, but Sprint Nextel Corp (S.N: Quote, Profile, Research) will not be able to, a person familiar with the matter said, according to the Journal.
China Mobile (0941.HK: Quote, Profile, Research), the world's largest wireless carrier with nearly 400 million subscriber accounts, likely will have its launch delayed until late this year or early 2009, the Journal reported, citing sources.
Android also has not won broad support from large mobile-software developers, and some said it is hard to develop programs while Google makes changes as it finishes its own software, the Journal reported.
Managing the software development while giving its partners the opportunity to lobby for new features takes time, the Journal quoted Google's director of mobile platforms, Andy Rubin, as saying. He also told the Journal: "This is where the pain happens... We are very, very close."

India salutes Class of '83 at World Cup reunion

A wave of nostalgia is sweeping across India as the nation marks the 25th anniversary of the team's stunning 1983 World Cup victory at Lord's.
Batting stalwart Sunil Gavaskar led the initiative to reunite his former team mates by organising a dinner at the site of the final in London on Wednesday, the meal coinciding with the date of India's first and only World Cup victory.
All rounder Kapil Dev inspired his unfancied team to an unlikely 43-run win over the West Indies after a sensational batting collapse dashed Caribbean hopes for a title hat-trick.
At home, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) hosted a function on Sunday, where each member of the team was presented with 2.5 million rupees (29,600 pounds) and a citation.
"Kapil receiving the World Cup and lifting it over his head, that is my greatest cricketing moment," Gavaskar told reporters.
"It still brings tears to my eyes when I think of it because that was the moment India showed the world it can play cricket."
Although reigning champions Australia have won four one-day World Cup titles, India regard the win as special because it lifted a nation starved of sporting success.
It triggered a cricket revolution in India, boosting millions of sports fans dejected by the decline of the men's hockey team and helping the nation become the game's global commercial hub.