The U.S. House of Representatives has passed without opposition two pieces of legislation introduced by Congressman Randy Hultgren (IL-14), member of the Science, Space and Technology Committee: H.R. 874, the American Super Computing Leadership Act of 2015 and H.R. 1158, the Department of Energy Laboratory Modernization and Technology Transfer Act of 2015. Both bills include language making better use of federal funds and are budget neutral - adding no additional cost to the taxpayer. Read further...

Mellanox Technologies Ltd., a supplier of high-performance Cloud networking solutions, has collaborated with Super Micro Computer Inc. to provide hyper-converged OpenStack Cloud-in-a-rack solutions based on the Mellanox CloudX reference architecture, Supermicro servers and storage, OpenStack Cloud management software from Mirantis, and the state-of-the-art open source, scale-out, software-defined storage solutions such as Ceph and EMC ScaleIO. Read further...

United Business Group (UBG) - an expert in IT Infrastructure Management, Technical Support Services, IT Consultancy and Technology Resource Outsourcing in Kuwait - has chosen the IBM Cloud to transform its business into a managed service provider. IBM and UBG will offer a flexible hybrid Cloud platform based on OpenStack to deliver customized Cloud services to customers in Kuwait. Businesses will be able to choose to have their data located in country and given the option to have the data reside either on premises or off premises. Read further...

IBM has introduced an expanded suite of OpenStack services that allow customers to integrate applications and data across hybrid Clouds including public, dedicated and local Cloud environments without the fear of vendor lock-in or costly customization. Read further...

Social consequences associated with demographic change are difficult to predict, but at the same time highly important. Predictions about the development of a predominately aging society require a reliable database from which predictions can be calculated. The heterogeneous research landscape on demographic change complicates the collection and homogenisation of research considerably. Constant change also makes profound scientific analysis enormously difficult to predict. Read further...

The Women in HPC Workshop will bring together female early-career researchers with a focus on European participation, providing them with an opportunity to showcase their work and to meet role models and peers in an environment designed to move beyond the stereotype of HPC as a male-dominated field. It will open with an introduction to current research by the Women in HPC network, the demographics of the HPC community and the different experiences of men and women in the field. Read further...

An international project involving Cardiff University researchers, set up to find the first direct evidence of the existence of gravitational waves, has been officially inaugurated at a ceremony in the US on 19 May 2015. Researchers at the University's School of Physics and Astronomy will use a powerful supercomputer to comb through data from two gravitational wave detectors that have undergone a major upgrade as part of the Advanced LIGO - Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory - Project. Read further...

When we say MAGIC we are not talking about mysterious tricks, such as making things disappear and reappear; when we talk about MAGIC we are referring to another kind of magic, the Middleware for collaborative Applications and Global vIrtual Communities project, which started its two-year term on 1st May 2015. Read further...

Over 200 children were recognised for their hard work in the Supersonic Cymru Challenge Awards at Swansea University. Led by High Performance Computing (HPC) Wales, the innovative competition was inspired by the Bloodhound SSC project and challenged Key Stage 3 students to utilise high performance computing technology to simulate a car that would break the world 1,000 mile per hour land speed record. Over 30 teams from 10 Schools in Wales rose to the challenge, with all smashing the record 1,000mph target. Read further...

The Fourth PRACE Implementation Phase project (PRACE-4IP) has held its kick-off meeting on 28-29 April 2015. 113 participants from PRACE Members met in picturesque Ostrava in the Czech Republic. Read further...

Scientists at the University of York's Centre for Quantum Technology have made an important step in establishing scalable and secure high rate quantum networks. Working with colleagues at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the University of Toronto, they have developed a protocol to achieve key-rates at metropolitan distances at three orders-of-magnitude higher than previously. Read further...

Some types of decision-making have proven to be very difficult to simulate, limiting progress in the development of computer models of the brain. EPFL scientists have developed a new model of complex decision-making, and have validated it against humans and cutting-edge computer models, uncovering fascinating information about what influences our decision-making and ability to learn from it. Read further...

CoolIT Systems has successfully deployed its Rack DCLC liquid cooled solution at the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC) in partnership with Huawei and Itprojekt. This is PSNC's first Direct Contact Liquid Cooled (DCLC) cluster and is already achieving the objectives of reducing cooling costs and improving processor performance by leveraging the lower operating temperatures. The result of this installation is the most economic liquid-cooled cluster in Poland. Read further...

Scientists from IBM Research, the University of Melbourne and the University of Queensland have moved a step closer to identifying the nanostructure of cellulose - the basic structural component of plant cell walls. Tapping into the IBM Blue Gene/Q supercomputer at the Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative (VLSCI), researchers have been able to model the structure and dynamics of cellulose at the molecular level. The insights could pave the way for more disease resistant varieties of crops and increase the sustainability of the pulp, paper and fibre industry - one of the main users of cellulose. Read further...

IBM has made two new investments in WayBlazer and Sellpoints to advance online travel and shopping apps powered by Watson. The announcement is part of IBM's $100 million commitment to drive new innovations and business solutions that build on Watson and follows the company's recent investments in Modernizing Medicine and Pathway Genomics. The financial terms of IBM's investments were not disclosed. Read further...

The University of Central Oklahoma's Center for Research and Education in Interdisciplinary Computation (CREIC) has selected Advanced Clustering Technologies to build a cluster supercomputer to be named "Buddy" in honour of the university's mascot, Buddy Bronco. The supercomputer project is being funded by a $304,745 research grant CREIC was awarded last year by the National Science Foundation. The "Buddy" supercomputer will support research and education for students, faculty and staff at the university, as well as researchers across the state. Read further...

Thanks to the support at resin.io there is now a containerized application deployment platform for the Parallella board enabling super easy workload scheduling for a fleet of thousands of Parallella computers across the globe with the push of a button. Read further...

Rescale, an industry expert in computer aided engineering (CAE) simulation and high performance computing (HPC), has made available the innovative Cloud HPC and simulation solution ScaleX Enterprise. Read further...

University of Utah engineers have taken a step forward in creating the next generation of computers and mobile devices capable of speeds millions of times faster than current machines. The Utah engineers have developed an ultracompact beamsplitter - the smallest on record - for dividing light waves into two separate channels of information. The device brings researchers closer to producing silicon photonic chips that compute and shuttle data with light instead of electrons. Electrical and computer engineering associate professor Rajesh Menon and colleagues describe their invention in the journalNature Photonics. Read further...

Bitfusion, a new company delivering powerful hardware acceleration technologies to boost application performance, has been selected as a finalist in TechCrunch Disrupt 2015's prestigious Startup Battlefield, and has closed its seed round of financing worth $1.45 million. The company received praise for its innovative technology, which automatically utilizes the underlying hardware infrastructure - any mix of CPUs, GPUs and FPGAs - to boost application software performance by up to 100x without any code re-write or specialized skills. The solution offers data-intensive organisations supercomputing-class capabilities with a platform layer that features custom software, performance-portable libraries and hardware appliances to provide unprecedented levels of acceleration. Read further...

Data centres - large clusters of servers that power Cloud computing operations, e-commerce and more - are one of the largest and fastest-growing consumers of electricity in the United States. The industry has been shifting from open-air cooling of these facilities to increasingly complex systems that segregate hot air from cold air. When it comes to cost savings, there are definite advantages to the aisle containment systems, which have been estimated to save 30 percent of cooling energy - but it's not yet clear how they increase the risk of overheating, or how to design them for greatest safety and optimum energy efficiency. Read further...

HP and Tsinghua Holdings have signed a partnership that will bring together Chinese enterprise technology assets of Hewlett-Packard and China's prestigious Tsinghua University to create the leading Chinese provider of technology infrastructure. Read further...