T-Platforms Group, a provider of systems, software, services and solutions for high performance computing, has won an open tender to deliver and install the second phase of expansion of the powerful Lomonosov supercomputer at M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU). The contract, worth roughly 25 million dollars (USD), provides for increasing the overall supercomputer performance up to 1.3 petaFLOPS (quadrillion operations per second). Read further...

ISC'11, the 26th International Supercomputing Conference that will be held June 19-23, 2011, urges all engineers and scientists in academia, industry and government seeking an opportunity to share their research results in the computing and scientific disciplines to submit their original work by Sunday, January 23, 2011. Read further...

The Computation-based Science and Technology Research Center (CaSToRC) of the Cyprus Institute (CyI), together with the Greek Research and Technology Network (GRNET), are organizing the 2011 Programming Winter School for the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE-1IP) at the CyI Athalassa Campus in Nicosia, Cyprus, on 24-27 January 2011. The school is co-organized with the LinkSCEEM-2 project 2011 Advanced Training Workshop. Read further...

Four researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory lead projects that have been awarded a total of 65 million hours of computing time on Argonne's energy-efficient Blue Gene/P ("Intrepid") supercomputer. The researchers will conduct advanced simulation and analysis, performing virtual experiments that would be almost impossible and impractical in the natural world. They will also develop scalable system software needed to fully harness the power of supercomputers. Read further...

Goethe University Frankfurt is using Bright Computing's Bright Cluster Manager to manage its new LOEWE-CSC supercomputer. In the latest release of the TOP500 supercomputer rankings, LOEWE-CSC is listed as the 22nd fastest in the world. It is also the fastest ATI GPU based system in the world, the fastest x86-based system in Germany. Read further...

Scientists at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have been awarded massive allocations on the nation's most powerful supercomputer to advance innovative research in improving the combustion of hydrogen fuels and increasing the efficiency of nanoscale solar cells. The awards were announced on Tuesday, November 30, by Energy Secretary Steven Chu as part of DOE's Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) programme. Read further...

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Information Directorate at Rome, New York, is conducting a ribbon cutting December 1 on a most unlikely supercomputer: a cluster of 1,760 Sony PlayStation 3 processors and 168 general-purpose Graphical Processing Units. Read further...

DICOM Grid, provider of a Cloud-based platform for medical imaging management, has made available DICOM Grid ImageCare, the first secure, scalable Cloud computing platform that makes searching, sharing and exchanging medical images as easy as using consumer web applications such as Google, Facebook and iTunes. ImageCare delivers an advanced, web-based application that provides seamless image sharing along with long-term archiving at disruptive pricing. Authorized physicians, hospitals and imaging facilities can now collaborate and act on medical imaging data in real time or whenever it's convenient from any location. Read further...

Theoretical biologists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have used a New Mexico supercomputer to aid an international research team in untangling another mystery related to ribosomes - those enigmatic jumbles of molecules that are the protein factories of living cells. The research, published in the journalNature, could aid in development of new antibiotics used to fight multidrug resistant superbugs such as MRSA - methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections - found in many U.S. hospitals. The work may also be important for combating engineered strains of anthrax and plague. Read further...

The Cloud Computing and Distributed Systems (CLOUDS) Laboratory at the University of Melbourne, Australia has released the next-version of Grid simulation software, the GridSim Toolkit 5.2. Read further...

Researchers from North Carolina State University and IBM have invented a way to update computer systems packaged in virtual machines in a computer "Cloud" - even when those programmes are off-line. The new Cloud computing patch tool developed by NC State and IBM is called Nuwa and protects virtual machines (VMs) from cyber-attacks by ensuring that they always receive important security upgrades. In addition, the researchers have determined that offline application of security patches is more than four times faster than on-line patch application. The tool is named after a Chinese goddess who patched a hole in the sky. Read further...

IBM scientists have unveiled a new chip technology that integrates electrical and optical devices on the same piece of silicon, enabling computer chips to communicate using pulses of light - instead of electrical signals, resulting in smaller, faster and more power-efficient chips than is possible with conventional technologies. The new technology, called CMOS Integrated Silicon Nanophotonics, is the result of a decade of development at IBM's global Research laboratories. The patented technology will change and improve the way computer chips communicate - by integrating optical devices and functions directly onto a silicon chip, enabling over 10X improvement in integration density than is feasible with current manufacturing techniques. Read further...

While the Jaguar supercomputer at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) recently ceded its rank as the world's most powerful supercomputer - dropping to no. 2 - it is still performing world-class science. Jaguar is virtually paving the way toward the development of a new generation of nuclear power reactors. Read further...

Mellanox Technologies, Ltd., a supplier of end-to-end connectivity solutions for servers and storage systems, and Voltaire Ltd., a provider of scale-out data centre fabrics, have signed a definitive agreement under which Mellanox will acquire 100 percent of Voltaire's outstanding ordinary shares for cash at a price of $8.75 per share, or a total equity value of approximately $218 million ($176 million net of cash). Read further...

Oracle has introduced the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud T3-1B, a new model that brings the industry-leading performance, scalability and availability of SPARC Solaris servers to Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud engineered systems. Designed for large-scale, mission-critical deployments, Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud is an engineered hardware and software system tested and tuned by Oracle to run Java and non-Java applications with extreme performance. Read further...

Oracle and Fujitsu have launched the enhanced SPARC Enterprise M-Series server product line with a new processor SPARC64 VII+. Oracle and Fujitsu also unveiled the unified enclosure design of the Oracle and Fujitsu SPARC Enterprise M-series servers which features the logos of both companies. Read further...

Oracle has unveiled the SPARC Supercluster based on SPARC T3 and M5000 servers. Oracle's SPARC Supercluster is a complete infrastructure solution for running Oracle database RAC environments. Based upon the architecture used in Oracle's new TPC-C world record, the SPARC Supercluster solution utilizes new SPARC servers, FlashFire, InfiniBand QDR, Oracle Solaris, and the ZFS Storage Appliance. Read further...

Oracle has achieved a world record TPC-C benchmark result for Oracle Database 11g Release 2 on a SPARC Supercluster with SPARC T3-4 servers, beating the fastest IBM TPC-C result with DB2 running on IBM's POWER7-based server cluster. Read further...

Oracle has expanded the SPARC platform by announcing a SPARC Solaris-based Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud T3-1B engineered system and a complete refresh of the SPARC server product line. Read further...

Altair, a global provider of technology and services empowering client innovation and decision making, has signed an agreement with Mindjet to offer its visual information mapping tool, MindManager, through the HyperWorks Partner Alliance (HWPA). This partnership embodies Altair's commitment to offering a diverse suite of leading software both inside and outside the realm of traditional Computer-Aided Engineering. Planned for official release in the first quarter of 2011, the latest version of MindManager will be available to HyperWorks users from the HWPA website at no incremental cost using customers' previously acquired HyperWorks Units. Read further...

U.S Energy Secretary Steven Chu has announced the largest ever awards of the Department's supercomputing time to 57 innovative research projects - using computer simulations to perform virtual experiments that in most cases would be impossible or impractical in the natural world. Utilizing two world-leading supercomputers with a computational capacity roughly equal to 135,000 quad-core laptops, the research could, for example, help speed the development of more efficient solar cells, improvements in biofuel production, or more effective medications to help slow the progression of Parkinson's disease. Read further...

Quantum information processing is arguably one of the most fascinating facets of modern quantum physics. A quantum computer operates with quantum bits (qubits) as units of information. Obeying the laws of quantum mechanics, such a computer would be capable of addressing several of the most difficult computational tasks unsolvable with present technology. In the past few decades, scientists learned to perform room-sized experiments to optically control and read out a small number of qubits. Read further...

Red Hat has acquired Makara, a developer of deployment and management solutions for applications in the Cloud. Makara's technologies will accelerate the development of Red Hat's comprehensive Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution as part of its Cloud Foundations portfolio. Read further...

Researchers have developed a new type of software that enables people to use large visual displays and touch screens interactively over the Internet for business and homeland security applications. Tabletop touch-operated displays are becoming popular with professionals in various fields, according to Niklas Elmqvist, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University. Read further...

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science an $8.4 million grant for research on a technology known as non-volatile logic, which enables computers and electronic devices to keep their state even while powered off, then start up and run complex programmes instantaneously. The research has broad implications across a range of technologies, including portable electronics, remote sensors, unmanned aerial vehicles and high-performance computing. Read further...

In 2008, experiments at The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University established pure graphene, a single layer of graphite only one atom thick, as the strongest material known to mankind. This raised a question for Chris Marianetti, Assistant Professor in Columbia Engineering's Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics: how and why does graphene break? Read further...

The Executable Paper Grand Challenge will take place at ICCS 2011 on June 1-3, 2011 in Tsukuba, Japan. The organizers are launching a Call for Papers for this Challenge. The deadline for submission is January 15, 2011. Read further...

The Second International Workshop on Architectural Support for Future Routers will be held on January 10, 2011 at Free University Amsterdam, Atrium, Medical Faculty, Van der Boechorststraat 7-9, 1081HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Access to the workshop is free of charge; however seating is limited. Read further...

The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) is using Bright Cluster Manager to manage its HPC Cluster in the FutureGrid project. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), FutureGrid is a distributed test-bed for advanced computing - supporting some of the most innovative computing experiments in the country. The project provides a powerful infrastructure for tackling a multitude of complex challenges from authentication, authorization, scheduling, virtualization, middleware design, interface design and cyber-security, to the optimization of Grid-enabled and Cloud-enabled computational schemes, spanning astronomy, atmospheric science, biology, chemistry, engineering, and epidemiology. Read further...

A major player in the civil and military aerospace industry, Dassault Aviation has chosen to extend its computing environment with two blade-based bullx supercomputers, developed by Bull. Read further...

The HPC Advisory Council, a worldwide organisation for high-performance computing research, development, outreach and education, announced that the Student Cluster Competition team from the University of Colorado has received the Fan Favorite Award. Read further...

SAP AG has certified its capabilities to deliver and manage clients' implementations of SAP applications via a hosted delivery model and IBM's Cloud Platforms. The certification enables IBM to provide enterprises around the world with hosted and Cloud-based support of the entire SAP solution portfolio, including business software applications for customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, product lifecycle management, supply chain management and corporate services. Read further...

A new laser-beam steering system that aims and focuses bursts of light onto single atoms for use in quantum computers has been demonstrated by collaborating researchers from Duke University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Described in the journalApplied Physics Letters, published by the American Institute of Physics, the new system is somewhat like the laser-light-show projectors used at rock concerts and planetariums. But it's much smaller, faster, atom-scale accurate and aimed at the future of computing, not entertainment. Read further...

Appro, a provider of supercomputing solutions, has been awarded a subcontract for a 147.5TF Appro 1U-Tetra supercomputers from Lockheed Martin in support of the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Programme (HPCMP). The HPCMP supports DoD objectives to strengthen national prominence by advancing critical technologies and expertise through use of High Performance Computing (HPC). Research scientists and engineers benefit from HPC innovation to solve complex US defense challenges. Read further...

Cisco and BMC Software have signed a strategic alliance to develop and market new solutions for large-scale multi-tenant Cloud computing infrastructures. Under the alliance, the two companies are aligning product development roadmaps and technology architectures to offer worldwide customers a complete suite of solutions that simplify and automate the delivery of Cloud services. As part of the alliance, Cisco and BMC have made available a new Cloud solution, the Integrated Cloud Delivery Platform, that is designed to meet the requirements of service providers and large-scale private Cloud computing environments. This new joint solution helps Cloud providers easily deploy end-to-end Cloud services running on a Cloud computing infrastructure that spans data centre networks, computing systems, storage and applications. Read further...

Extending its commitment to delivering integrated hardware and software systems that are engineered to work together, Oracle has made available the Oracle VM blade cluster reference configuration for Sun Blade 6000 modular systems. Read further...

IBM has made available new on-line software services based on the same on-premise solutions used by clients today - now delivered as a monthly subscription offering - that enables better automation and control of IT Service Desk functions. This new service adds to IBM's software-as-a-service offerings that help automate a range of IT services critical to maintaining business operations. Read further...

HP is the first to ship products based on a new energy-efficient Ethernet standard it helped develop that enables clients to reduce the energy consumption and operational costs of their IT equipment. Read further...

Bull, the only European company offering combined expertise in IT infrastructures IT and complex systems, has unveiled 'BullWay 2013', its strategic plan for the years 2011 to 2013, along with its associated financial objectives. Read further...

Altair Engineering Inc. has formed a strategic partnership with Digital Commerce Technologies Inc. (DCTI) to resell and provide implementation services in the Americas for HiQube, the company’s optimization-driven, data analytics solution. The channel partner agreement will extend support locally while providing deep domain expertise in growth industry verticals for fast, cost-effective implementations. Read further...

Dell and Compellent Technologies Inc. are engaged in advanced discussions regarding a possible business combination involving the two companies. Read further...

Oracle has made available Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud X2-2, a complete Cloud application infrastructure for consolidating the widest possible range of Java and non-Java application types and workloads and meeting the most demanding service-level requirements. Read further...

A team of researchers at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has been awarded $5.5 million for ongoing efforts to develop technology they expect will lead to computers and other devices that use less power and require virtually no start-up time when turned on. Read further...

Two leading Russian banks, Rosbank and Alfa-Bank, have selected IBM POWER7 Systems to manage millions of data-intensive transactions and analyze that data in real time, helping to improve customer service while reducing data centre costs. Read further...

To provide customers with optimized and integrated systems for Cloud and highly-virtualized environments, Oracle has expanded its Sun Blade systems portfolio with new SPARC and x86 blade products and supporting integrated solutions. Read further...

A University of Akron (UA) researcher is leveraging advanced modelling and simulation techniques to more precisely understand how organic materials bond to inorganic materials, a natural phenomenon that if harnessed, could lead to the design of composite materials and devices for such applications as bone replacement, sensing systems, efficient energy generation and treatment of diseases. Read further...

A team of UCSF researchers has engineered E. coli with the key molecular circuitry that will enable genetic engineers to program cells to communicate and perform computations. The work builds into cells the same logic gates found in electronic computers and creates a method to create circuits by "rewiring" communications between cells. This system can be harnessed to turn cells into miniature computers, according to findings that will be reported in an upcoming issue ofNatureand appear in the advanced on-line edition. Read further...

Cells in living organisms continuously pull on the matrix fibrils surrounding them - on fibronectin protein fibres, for example. Consequently the fibronectin in an intact connective tissue environment is frequently stretched. If one cuts oneself, or enzymatic processes in an inflammation cause a kind of cut in the tissue, the tension on the fibronectin fibres is lost. Fibronectin dissolved in the blood then plays an important part in wound healing. It is woven into a network of fibres by the cells and initiates the first step in repairing the wound. The fibre tension does not build up again until the tissue repair process is started by fibroblasts - this is visibly signalled by the crinkly edges of the wound during healing. Read further...

In modern science and engineering, as in college football, sometimes the bigger your lineup, the more you win. Winning in research - making discoveries - requires massive amounts of computing capacity. In this area, Purdue has one of the best front lines in the nation. Read further...

A quicker and cheaper technique to scan molecular databases developed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory could put scientists on the fast track to developing new drug treatments. A team led by Jerome Baudry of the University of Tennessee-ORNL Center for Molecular Biophysics adapted a widely used existing software to allow supercomputers such as ORNL's Jaguar to sift through immense molecular databases and pinpoint chemical compounds as potential drug candidates. Read further...

Physicists from Rice University and Princeton University have discovered how to use one of the information technology industry's mainstay materials - gallium arsenide semiconductors - as an ultrasensitive microwave detector that could be suitable for next-generation computers. The discovery comes at a time when computer chip engineers are racing both to add nanophotonic devices directly to microchips and to boost processor speeds beyond 10 gigahertz (GHz). Read further...

Pierre-Yves Chaltiel, 54, joins French company Bull next January 3rd 2011, as Executive Vice President for development and International and member of the Group Executive committee. He will be in charge of the development of Key accounts and responsible for the group's international subsidiaries. Read further...

The annual congress and fair "Supercomputing and Communications 2010" is the main event in the domains of high performance networking, computing, storage and services and combines a gigantic exhibition with a high quality technical-scientific programme. Moreover the fair not only offers space to vendors and manufacturers but also to the major US labs and computing and research centres and all other worldwide research labs, computing and e-science centres and individual businesses. This creates a formidable activity of cross-overs and beyond the domain or discipline contacts. A melt of science, research, technology, visions and practical issues of about 10.000 participants from literally all over the world. (Patrick Aerts) Read further...

Altair Engineering Inc., a global provider of technology and services that empower client innovation and decision-making, will host the 2011 European HyperWorks Technology Conference from November 7th to 9th, 2011 in Bonn, Germany. The European version of the HTC conference series - now in its fifth year - has been growing from a HyperWorks user's conference into one of the major PLM technology events in Europe, with around 500 attendees from all over the world. Read further...

The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, PRACE, welcomed the upcoming availability of the third Tier-0 system for the PRACE Research Infrastructure. The contract about the next supercomputer at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre, Germany (Leibniz-Rechenzentrum, LRZ) - as part of the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS) - "SuperMUC" was signed on December 13th in the presence of the Minister of the State of Bavaria Dr. Wolfgang Heubisch, Prof. Dr. Arndt Bode, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and the Humanities, Germany, and Martin Jetter, Chairman of the Board, IBM Germany. Read further...

PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, organized an Autumn School on HPC (High Performance Computing) technologies in general and application development on October 25–29, 2010 at the campus of the Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain. Read further...

Cyberinfrastructure pioneer Francine Berman, the vice president for research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has been named a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Read further...

SHI International has selected HP Networking solutions as the network infrastructure for its new Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Cloud Center. SHI, a $3 billion global provider of information technology software, hardware and services, needed a single, scalable networking architecture that would be affordable and capable of supporting the complex technical requirements of its new Cloud Center. According to SHI, its existing networking environment was complex and difficult to manage, which led the company to solicit competitive bids for building its new Cloud computing infrastructure. Read further...

HP has launched a comprehensive support solution that enables clients running business-critical applications on virtualized HP ProLiant servers to improve performance and availability while reducing costs and complexity. The new HP Critical Advantage service provides clients with an assigned account team to deliver support and maintain uptime of business-critical, virtualized environments. Account teams focus on problem resolution and process improvement, which enables clients to redirect staff resources toward innovation. Read further...

Andrew Lumsdaine and Jeremiah Willcock of the Open Systems Lab (OSL) at the Pervasive Technology Institute at Indiana University are part of an international team that developed the "Search" benchmark for the Graph 500 List. This benchmark evaluates a system's ability to traverse extremely large data structures. Read further...

Microsoft Corp. has signed new partnerships with three of Australia's top research organisations as part of the company's Global Cloud Research Engagement Initiative launched earlier this year. Representatives from National ICT Australia (NICTA), The Australian National University (ANU), and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) attended a launch event in Sydney to show their support for the programme that will provide scientific researchers across the continent with access to advanced client plus Cloud computing resources and technical support. Read further...

Oracle has introduced Oracle Cloud Office and Open Office 3.3, two complete, open standards-based office productivity suites for the desktop, web and mobile devices - helping users significantly improve productivity, reduce costs and achieve greater innovation across the enterprise. Read further...

The European Open Filesystem (OSF) was initiated at the headquarters of ParTec Cluster Competence Center GmbH in Munich. As a legal form the Societas Cooperativa Europaea (SCE) was selected. The purpose of this enterprise is to promote the establishment and adoption of an open source parallel filesystem, sustain and enhance its quality, capabilities and functionality and to ensure that the specific requirements of European organisations, institutions and companies are considered. Read further...

LinkShare, a performance marketing network, has significantly enhanced the performance and availability of its reporting and analysis services for hundreds of thousands of advertisers and publishers in its network using Oracle Exadata Database Machine. Read further...

IBM computing system named "Watson" will compete on Jeopardy! against the show's two most successful and celebrated contestants - Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. The first-ever man vs. machine Jeopardy! competition will air on February 14, 15 and 16, 2011, with two matches being played over three consecutive days. Read further...

Dell and Compellent Technologies Inc. have entered into a definitive agreement for Dell to acquire Compellent, a rapidly growing provider of highly-virtualized storage solutions with automated data management features, including tiering and thin provisioning, for enterprise and Cloud-computing environments. The acquisition is the latest strategic investment by Dell as it expands its portfolio of enterprise-class storage solutions and is consistent with Dell's strategy to help customers better manage data growth, reduce storage costs and dramatically simplify the management of IT infrastructure. Read further...

The rapid advances in information technology that drive many sectors of the U.S. economy could stall unless the nation aggressively pursues fundamental research and development of parallel computing - hardware and software that enable multiple computing activities to process simultaneously, according to a new report by the National Research Council. Better options for managing power consumption in computers will also be essential for continued improvements in IT performance. Read further...

Moving a step closer toward quantum computing, a research team in The Netherlands recently fabricated a photodetector based on a single nanowire, in which the active element is a single quantum dot with a volume of a mere 7,000 cubic nanometers. The device is described in the American Institute of Physics' journalApplied Physics Letters. Read further...

From atomic crystals to spiral galaxies, self-assembly is ubiquitous in nature. In biological processes, self-assembly at the molecular level is particularly prevalent. Phospholipids, for example, will self-assemble into a bilayer to form a cell membrane, and actin, a protein that supports and shapes a cell's structure, continuously self-assembles and disassembles during cell movement. Bioengineers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have been exploring a unique phenomenon whereby randomly dispersed microparticles self-assemble into a highly organized structure as they flow through microscale channels. Read further...

Government agencies around the world make billions of bits of raw data available to the public each day, but this data is often in difficult formats or so widely spread around the Web it is virtually unusable to the public and scientists who seek to use this valuable information in their research. Computer scientists within the Tetherless World Research Constellation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed an application to help solve the problem. A collaboration with scientific publisher Elsevier, the application utilizes the U.S. government data warehouse, Data.gov, to provide scientists with easy and direct access to government data sets relevant to their research. Read further...

University of Utah physicists stored information for 112 seconds in what may become the world's tiniest computer memory: magnetic "spins" in the centers or nuclei of atoms. Then the physicists retrieved and read the data electronically - a big step toward using the new kind of memory for both faster conventional and superfast "quantum" computers. Read further...

SGI, a trusted expert in technical computing, has introduced a new overclocking platform for the Rackable half-depth server line that will bring increased CPU frequency speeds to high frequency trading, compute, and other applications that require more than the fastest available processors. This new platform expands SGI's product portfolio to include overclocked CPU configurations as part of the company's commitment to unique, custom-tailored platforms for customers that require the utmost in high performance computing. Read further...

The International Symposium on Grids and Clouds (ISGC 2011) in conjunction with the Open Grid Forum (OGF 31) will be held at Academia Sinica in Taipei from 21-25 March 2011, with co-located events (19-21 March), including IGTF All-Hands Meeting, IDGF Tutorial, Asia@home Hackfest, iRODS Workshop. The conference is hosted by the Academia Sinica Grid Computing Centre (ASGC). The deadline for paper submission has now been extended to Friday, 7th January, 2011. Read further...

Scientists from the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at Delft University of Technology and Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands have succeeded in controlling the building blocks of a future super-fast quantum computer. They are now able to manipulate these building blocks (qubits) with electrical rather than magnetic fields, as has been the common practice up till now. They have also been able to embed these qubits into semiconductor nanowires. The scientists' findings have been published in the current issue of the science journalNature(23 December). Read further...

NATO's Allied Command Transformation (ACT) has selected IBM for a strategic technology project to gain experience with emerging information technologies to improve data centre efficiency and increase data sharing by its 28 member nations. The initiative will enable the organisation to explore and demonstrate a new Cloud computing model that could be used to consolidate and integrate technology capabilities for critical Command and Control programmes. Read further...

Further enhancing the popular, open source, cross-platform virtualization software, Oracle has made available Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0. Part of Oracle's comprehensive portfolio of virtualization solutions, Oracle VM VirtualBox enables desktop or laptop computers to run multiple guest operating systems simultaneously, allowing users to get the most flexibility and utilization out of their PCs, and supports a variety of host operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, most popular flavours of Linux (including Oracle Linux), and Oracle Solaris. Read further...

Super Micro Computer Inc., a global expert in server technology innovation and green computing, has introduced two new additions to its Double-Sided Storage family. First, the SC417 supports an industry-leading 88 hot-swap 2.5-inch enterprise-class hard drives in a 4U JBOD configuration. Second, the SC837 supports an industry-leading 28 hot-swap 3.5-inch enterprise drives in a 3U JBOD configuration. Both of these configurations provide the highest hot-swap storage density in their class, with the SC417 supporting up to 40 hot-swap drives in the rear and delivering nearly double the storage capacity while saving valuable rack space and reducing costs. Read further...

The amount of energy consumed by data centres is increasing rapidly around the world, and China is no exception. With its growing information technology and telecom industries and its emerging status as a supercomputer power, China continues to expand its data centre capacity. In an effort to help reduce carbon emissions, the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a world leader in high-performance buildings, has started working with China to improve the energy performance of its data centres. Read further...

Cloud computing, an emerging resource delivery and consumption model that has come along with the development of distributed computing, parallel processing, Grid computing and other technologies, acquires software, hardware and service resources in the resource pool through Internet. At present, it is undoubtedly a significant focus in the global IT industry. Various countries and regions including the United States, Japan and Europe are considering Cloud computing as a field of key strategic development in the future, with considerable investments represented by US's Apps.gov and Nebula, UK's G-cloud and Japan's Kasumigaseki Cloud in order to obtain a leading position in the 3rd wave of IT Revolution. Read further...

IBM researchers have revealed a previously unknown aspect of key physics inside Racetrack memory - a new technology design which stands to improve memory capabilities within mobile phones, laptop computers and business-class servers. This new class of memory could enable devices to store much more information - as much as a factor of 100 times greater - while using much less energy than today's designs. Read further...

Instrumental Inc.'s board of directors unanimously approved a buyout merger agreement to cash out all of the company's stockholders, with the exception of four of its directors and officers. Pending shareholder approval, the transaction is expected to close on December 31, 2010 or shortly thereafter. There will be no change to the legal structure of the company as a result of the buyout merger transaction, and the company will continue to be known as Instrumental Inc. Read further...

NVIDIA has added 20 new CUDA Research Centres and CUDA Teaching Centres, underscoring the continued growth of GPU computing across the globe. The new institutions - located in the U.S., Germany, France, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, and Turkey - are focused on leveraging the immense parallel processing power of graphics processing units (GPUs) to address today's most challenging computing issues and drive the next wave of scientific discovery. Read further...

Biogemma, GenomeQuest, and SGI have signed a collaboration that has resulted in the first high-performance computing solution deployed for agriculture genomics. Specifically, here at their research headquarters and serving three international breeding companies and one French technical institute, Biogemma has deployed the GenomeQuest solution for sequence data management and analysis on the SGI Altix UV 1000, the world's fastest, most scalable supercomputer. Read further...

A new on-line publication, theJournal Of Computational Science Education(JOCSE), will publish peer-reviewed articles focusing on various aspects of teaching computational science - the application of computing, especially supercomputing, to the solution of complex scientific and engineering problems. Read further...

Voltaire Ltd., a provider of scale-out data centre fabrics, has signed a license and development agreement with IBM Corporation. Under the terms of the agreement, Voltaire will license selected software to IBM. Read further...

Dot Hill Systems Corp., a provider of Unified Virtual Storage and SAN storage solutions, has signed a new OEM agreement with Wortmann AG, a Germany-based IT solutions provider specializing in small to medium business and home user markets through the European distribution channel. Read further...

Fujitsu has launche a software package for managing network monitoring services available only in Japan. Proactnes II SM V01 monitors and analyzes the communications response and data volumes (packets) of networks found inside large-scale data centres that provide Cloud services, as well as the Internet which connects users to Cloud services. The software detects early signs of failure by pinpointing areas in the Cloud where these problems arise. Read further...

DEISA, the Distributed European Infrastructure for Supercomputing Applications, and PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe organize a Spring School on 29-31 March 2011 in Edinburgh, Scotland, hosted by EPCC - The Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre. Read further...

The EUREKA ITEA 2 software Cluster ParMA project has developed advanced technologies to exploit multi-core architectures in semiconductor chips and so deliver substantial performance improvements for high-performance computing (HPC). ParMA technology has established new goals in modelling and simulation and enabled the development of innovative computer-intensive applications to accelerate research in many domains. It offers substantial improvements in applications such as virtual prototyping to reduce costs and accelerate design of new products. The results are already being exploited in applications such as: the Bullx HPC platform, one of the world's best supercomputer; the UNITE development tool package which includes a full set of interoperable tools for advanced debugging and analysis; and RECOM simulation software for an automatic 3D simulator. Read further...

NCSA has deployed the ab initio quantum chemistry package TeraChem 1.41 on the centre's hybrid CPU/GPU cluster, called Lincoln. This is the first time NCSA has provided a GPU-enabled chemistry application on its production GPU cluster. Read further...

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, one of the world's largest and most respected centres for scientific research, has selected Brocade MLXe Core Routers as part of a network infrastructure upgrade to support its high throughput computing (HTC) requirements and a data environment that exceeds 15 petabytes (15 million gigabytes) per year. According to the website, Whatsabyte.com, a single petabyte is equivalent to "20 million 4-door filing cabinets full of text". Read further...

To keep pace with society's ever increasing data-transmission requirements, a new project funded under the EU 7th Framework Programme, is set to develop the next generation internet infrastructure to enhance the capacity of broadband core networks providing increased bandwidth of 100 times current capacity. Read further...

There is no single entity behind the Internet. It is made up of different networks that are managed by service providers. These service providers - or operators - manage what data is being sent and monitor the amount of traffic being used in terms of simple web browsing, multimedia streaming or peer to peer file sharing. When the data traffic on a network is too dense what experts call "bottlenecks" can occur, slowing the delivery of information to your computer, which can result in a slower Internet experience. A EUREKA-backed project entitled TRAMMS, for Traffic Measurements and Models in Multi-Service networks, incorporating teams from Sweden, Hungary and Spain, aimed to solve this issue by gaining access to Internet networks run by operators in both Sweden and Spain and monitoring traffic over a period of three years. This gave them an excellent insight into user behaviour, enabling them to accurately measure network traffic so that in the future, service providers know how much capacity is needed and can avoid bottlenecks. Read further...

Dr. Gudmund Høst from the Research Council of Norway, was elected new Chair of the e-IRG for the next two-year season (2011-2012) at the e-IRG meeting in Brussels on the 16 December, 2010. Dr. Høst has been a delegate of the e-IRG since 2004. He is replacing Dr. Leif Laaksonen from CSC - IT Centre for Science, Finland, who has been chairing the e-IRG since 2006. Read further...