Demonstrating the outstanding performance of its SPARC T4-4 servers and the benefits of hardware and software engineered to work together, Oracle has achieved a best-in-class TPC-H benchmark result at the three TB scale factor. Read further...

Helping customers and partners reach the Cloud faster, Oracle has launched the Oracle Solaris 11 Training and Certification Programmes from Oracle University. Oracle Solaris 11 is the first Cloud OS, designed to meet the security, performance and scalability requirements of Cloud-based deployments and allow customers to run their most demanding enterprise applications in private, hybrid, or public Clouds. Read further...

Oracle has introduced Oracle WebLogic Server, 12c, the latest release of the no. 1 application server for conventional systems, engineered systems and Cloud environments. As the centre piece of Oracle's Cloud Application Foundation, and a core part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware product family, Oracle WebLogic Server continues to deliver innovative new capabilities for building, deploying and running Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) applications. Read further...

HP has launched new Cloud Solutions that advance deployment of private, public and hybrid Clouds, enabling enterprises, service providers and governments to capitalize on emerging market opportunities. Read further...

The doctoral dissertation of Licentiate of Science (Technology) Antti Hyvärinen examines the solving of hard structured problems using Cloud computing. According to Antti Hyvärinen, Cloud computing can significantly speed up problem solving and save energy. Cloud computing means decentralising IT services so that tens, hundreds or thousands of distributed computers can be used simultaneously. Read further...

China Intelligence Information Systems Inc., who offers virtualization technology application and Cloud computing related consulting service, products, solutions and implementation service in the People's Republic of China, has signed three contracts with a total value approximately at $1.5 million with three subsidiaries of China Southern Power Grid Company Limited. Read further...

HP and Alcatel-Lucent have introduced a jointly developed solution to help organisations move, store and access vast amounts of information by integrating data centre infrastructure technology and high-performance communications networks. Read further...

Cancer Research UK, a world expert in the study of cancer, has turned to Platform LSF to help drive forward its human genome research project at the Cambridge Research Institute (CRI). Platform LSF is the most powerful workload manager available for high performance computing (HPC) environments and scientific computing. By integrating Platform LSF with a new advanced genetic sequencing platform, the institute has gained greater insight into genetic cancer mutations, that will lead to scientific breakthroughs in the areas of cancer diagnosis, treatment and prevention. Read further...

One of the first tasks for Warwick's new GBP 1.3 million supercomputer is to use its monster megabytes to analyse the natural properties of the tiny mollusc shell. The humble mollusc shell is made up of only one mineral: calcium carbonate, yet the combination of that plus other enzymes and proteins give it remarkable properties in terms of strength while remaining incredibly light. Read further...

UK scientists and businesses will have access to the most sophisticated technology keeping them at the cutting edge of research and development, as details of the Government's multi-million pound e-infrastructure investment were announced by David Willetts. The investment includes GBP 43 million for ARCHER, a new national supercomputer to support advanced research, such as complex chemistry and climate science, while helping industry design new products. For sectors such as aerospace and automotive, this could lead to better analysis of car incidents, helping industry build safer vehicles in less time. E-infrastructure also supports the world's best researchers through increased data storage and faster networks. Read further...

BCNET, a not-for-profit organisation that runs one of the world's most advanced regional research and education networks, has deployed the ADVA FSP 3000 in its high-capacity infrastructure. Connecting over 140 research and higher-education institutions, schools and colleges throughout British Columbia, the diverse path, ring-configuration allows the shared IT services organisation to offer leading-edge network services to accelerate research, collaboration and learning. Installed by Charter, one of Canada's fastest-growing integrators, the new network is built on Reconfigurable Add/Drop Multiplexers (ROADMs) providing BCNET with previously unattainable levels of flexibility. Read further...

ADVA Optical Networking has launched the ADVA FSP 150CC-XG210, an ultra-compact 10Gbit/s Ethernet service demarcation and aggregation device. The new product enables the delivery of differentiated Ethernet services up to 10Gbit/s with strict service level assurance for carrier and enterprise applications. Read further...

ADVA Optical Networking has achieved the successful qualification of the ADVA FSP 3000 for the IBM zEnterprise Bladecenter Extension. Read further...

ADVA Optical Networking and P&TLuxembourg, a fixed and mobile telephone operator in Luxembourg, have introduced the industry's first commercial installation of a high-end parallel sysplex over InfiniBand service in Luxembourg. Deployed in a major financial institution's network, the solution provides a fully-secured, mainframe business continuity service. Read further...

Finnish scientists have used supercomputing infrastructure developed by EU-funded researchers to study the accuracy of climate models as part of an on-going effort to improve their accuracy and relevance. Climate models are essential to prepare society for the potential impacts of climate change, but the science is hugely complex and still suffers from significant uncertainty. Current predictions suggest that temperature could rise anywhere between 1.1 and 6.4 °C in the period 1990 to 2095.This is a huge variation. Read further...

IBM has opened the IBM Bucharest Systems Laboratory, the company's first European site for developing and testing IBM switch and networking hardware and software. The Lab, which joins a network of IBM centres around the globe, will leverage the company's 2010 acquisition of Blade Network Technologies and work to bulletproof IBM's products, such as IBM Networking Operation System and IBM VMready software that enables network switches to recognize virtual machines on the network. Read further...

Researchers at the Technical University of Madrid (UPM, Spain) have created "shadow models" and a type of software that calculates the amount of solar radiation that reaches streets and buildings in high resolution. According to the results published in theResearch Journal of Chemistry and Environment, they could help to optimise the energy consumption of cities. Read further...

Cray Inc. has been selected to provide a new supercomputer to the Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies (ACCMS) at Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan. Cray has been chosen to deliver a 300 Tflop/s Cray XE6 supercomputer in 2012 and a 400 400 Tlop/s next-generation Cray supercomputer code-named "Cascade" in 2014. Read further...

The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) acquired an SGI UV1000 in July 2010 with help from an award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Named Blacklight, this system has 32 terabytes of memory partitioned into two connected 16-terabyte shared-memory nodes, in effect, the two largest shared-memory systems in the world. With certain programming approaches, furthermore, such as message-passing and partitioned global address space (PGAS), researchers can access all 32 terabytes as a single memory space. Read further...

Amarnath Gupta, a researcher with the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, has been named a Distinguished Scientist by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world's largest educational and scientific computing society. Read further...

The latest Green500 List shows two continuing trends despite seven of the world's Top 10 greenest supercomputers changing up from the previous June 2011 rankings: Many supercomputers are aggregating many low-power processors such as the IBM BlueGene/Q, while others are using more energy-efficient accelerators, typically from the gaming/graphics market. Read further...

As sophisticated as modern climate models are, one critical component continues to elude their precision - clouds. Simulating these fluffy puffs of water vapour is so computationally complex that even today's most powerful supercomputers, working at quadrillions of calculations per second, cannot accurately model them. Read further...

The United States' fastest campus supercomputer has been built at Purdue University. Nicknamed "Carter", the supercomputer was ranked 54th on the latest international Top500.org list of the world's most powerful supercomputers. The supercomputer was built using the latest technologies from Intel, HP and Mellanox, including not-yet-released Xenon E-5 "Sandy Bridge" Intel processors and HP Proliant servers. Read further...

IBM and Micron Technology Inc. will begin production of a new memory device built using the first commercial CMOS manufacturing technology to employ through-silicon vias (TSVs). IBM's advanced TSV chip-making process enables Micron's Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) to achieve speeds 15 times faster than today's technology. Read further...

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), the premier R&D organisation under the Ministry of Communications and IT, Government of India, has bagged the IDC HPC Innovation Excellence Award announced at the International Data Corporation (IDC) briefing on the sidelines of Supercomputing Conference 2011 held at Seattle, Washington. Read further...