During the e-IRG Open Workshop, recently held in Belval/Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, Primeur Magazine had the opportunity to talk with Paolo Budroni from the University of Vienna. Paolo Budroni is representing the Austrian Ministry of Science as a new member of the e-IRG Delegates Meeting. The University of Vienna is one of the largest universities of the German-speaking countries. Since three years the University of Vienna is involved in e-Infrastructures. It started with the promotion of a nation-wide project called e-Infrastructures Austria. Read further...

On January 7th at 22:30 UTC, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) celebrated its 20th anniversary with the math discovery of the new largest known prime number, 274,207,281-1, having 22,338,618 digits, on a university computer volunteered by Curtis Cooper for the project. The same GIMPS software just uncovered a flaw in Intel's latest Skylake CPUs, and its global network of CPUs peaking at 450 trillion calculations per second remains the longest continuously-running "grassroots supercomputing" project in Internet history. Read further...

In 1867, Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell challenged the second law of thermodynamics according to which entropy in a closed system must always increase. In his thought experiment, Maxwell took a closed gas container, divided it into two parts with an inner wall and provided the wall with a small trap door. By opening and closing the door, the creature - 'demon' - controlling it could separate slow cold and fast warm particles to their respective sides, thus creating a temperature difference in contravention of the laws of thermodynamics. Read further...

Interconnecting different quantum systems is important for future quantum computing architectures, but has proven difficult to achieve. Researchers from the TU Delft and the University of Vienna have now realized a first step towards a universal quantum link based on quantum-mechanical vibrations of a nanomechanical device. Read further...

On March 10th, the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) will present the 2016 ESFRI Roadmap on Large Scale Research Infrastructures during a one-day conference in Amsterdam. The venue will be the Trippenhuis Building, the headquarters of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Read further...

In-memory analytic database vendor Exasol continues to report rapid growth across the globe, with the UK its second largest market. Exasol has just moved its UK headquarters to Bracknell as part of a strategic move to make its home in an area with highly-skilled technology professionals and opportunities for business development, whilst also moving itself closer to its partners and customers based in the Thames Valley. Read further...

Researchers from MIPT have found a solution to the problem of overheating of active plasmonic components. These components will be essential for high-speed data transfer within the opto-electronic microprocessors of the future, which will be able to function tens of thousands of times faster than the microprocessors currently in use today. In the paper published inACS Photonicsthe researchers have demonstrated how to efficiently cool optoelectronic chips using industry-standard heatsinks in spite of high heat generation in active plasmonic components. Read further...

Oak Ridge National Laboratory has deployed Allinea Software's code performance profiler Allinea MAP in strength on the Titan supercomputer. The tool adds to their existing adoption of the scalable debugger, Allinea DDT. The Titan system is the world's second fastest supercomputer - with a peak performance of 27-Petaflop/s. Read further...

Italy-based Do IT Systems has signed up to the Bright Partner Programme. Do IT Systems draws on many years of experience in the industrial high performance computing market, collaborating with hardware vendors, resellers and end users to provide innovative HPC solutions. The company prides itself on technical skills and strong customer relationships, and works with organisations that range from small academic groups to large multinationals that operate in the industrial and manufacturing domain. Do IT is one of the few European systems integrators to offer remote HPC management. Read further...

Bright Computing, a provider of hardware-agnostic cluster and Cloud management software, has released version 7.2 of its industry-leading Bright Cluster Manager software solutions, including Bright Cluster Manager for HPC, Bright Cluster Manager for Big Data, and Bright OpenStack. The updates incorporate a wide range of new features, improvements to existing features, and significantly enhanced monitoring capabilities, including job-based metrics. Version 7.2 is now available for purchase and download. Read further...

Cray Inc. has signed a $36 million contract to upgrade and expand the Cray XC supercomputers and Cray Sonexion storage system at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). When the project is completed, the enhanced systems will allow the world-class numerical weather prediction and research centre to continue to drive improvements in its highly-complex models to provide more accurate weather forecasts. Read further...

The Lonestar 5 supercomputer, hosted by the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), is in full production and is ready to contribute to advancing science across the state of Texas. Managed by TACC, the centre's second petaflop system is primed to be a leading computing resource for the engineering and science research community. Read further...

The Bullion servers from Bull, the Atos brand for technology products and software, beat yet again performance records, according to the international benchmark from Standard Performance Evaluation Cooperative (SPEC). Performed with a 16-socket configuration, this benchmark demonstrates that the high-end enterprise bullion x86 servers perform at exceptional levels and are the most powerful in the world in terms of speed and memory. Read further...

The University of California Board of Regents has approved Michael Witherell, vice chancellor for research at UC Santa Barbara, as director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Michael Witherell is a leading physicist with a highly distinguished career in teaching, research and managing complex organisations. He has received numerous honours and recognitions for his scientific contributions and achievements. Michael Witherell is the former director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in northern Illinois and currently holds the Presidential Chair in Physics at UC Santa Barbara (UCSB). Read further...

Cable Public Affairs Channel (CPAC) in Canada has deployed DDN SFA12K and DDN WOS Object Storage to fuel its innovative delivery of public affairs content to more than 11 million homes via cable, satellite and wireless distribution and via 24/7 web streaming. As Canada's only privately-owned, commercial free and bilingual non-profit television service, CPAC offers viewers insight and analysis of the people, politics and events shaping Canadian public policy. Read further...

Researchers at Binghamton University have become the first to use an open-source graphics processor unit (GPU) for research. Binghamton University computer science assistant professor Timothy Miller, Aaron Carpenter and graduate student Philip Dexter, along with co-author Jeff Bush, have developed Nyami, a synthesizable graphics processor unit (GPU) architectural model for general-purpose and graphics-specific workloads. This marks the first time a team has taken an open-source GPU design and run a series of experiments on it to see how different hardware and software configurations would affect the circuit's performance. Read further...

A team of engineers from the Faculty of Computing & Applied Science (FEAS) at Riphah International University has successfully developed a new supercomputer architecture. A supercomputer composed of multiple processors, memory, I/O system and an interconnect mechanism has a significantly more complex architecture than ordinary computers. Read further...

Selective oxidation plays a key role in the production of compounds widely used throughout the chemical industry. Now, according to a new study using advanced computational resources including the Comet supercomputer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego, these materials and other compounds, such as those used to make polyester resins, could undergo a new catalysis process that uses less energy and generates fewer by-products than current methods. Read further...

Yahoo Inc. has launched the public release of the largest-ever machine learning dataset to the academic research community. With this release, the company aims to advance the field of large-scale machine learning and recommender systems, and to help level the playing field between industrial and academic research. Read further...

Using Mira, physicists from Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory uncovered a new understanding about electron behaviour in edge plasma. Based on this discovery, improvements were made to a well-known analytical formula that could enhance predictions of and, ultimately, increase fusion power efficiency. Read further...

Machine-learning technology developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory played a key role in the discovery of supernova ASASSN-15lh, an exceptionally powerful explosion that was 570 billion times brighter than the sun and more than twice as luminous as the previous record-holding supernova. This extraordinary event marking the death of a star was identified by the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN) and is described in a new study published in Science . Read further...

A new DARPA programme aims to develop an implantable neural interface able to provide unprecedented signal resolution and data-transfer bandwidth between the human brain and the digital world. The interface would serve as a translator, converting between the electrochemical language used by neurons in the brain and the ones and zeros that constitute the language of information technology. The goal is to achieve this communications link in a biocompatible device no larger than one cubic centimeter in size, roughly the volume of two nickels stacked back to back. The programme, Neural Engineering System Design (NESD), stands to dramatically enhance research capabilities in neurotechnology and provide a foundation for new therapies. Read further...

AliCloud, the Cloud computing business of Alibaba Group, an e-commerce company in China, became the latest major player to turn to GPUs to speed up its artificial intelligence efforts. AliCloud will work with NVIDIA to broadly promote the first GPU-accelerated, Cloud-based, high performance computing platform in China. Read further...

The Health Cyberinfrastructure (CI) Division of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, is participating in a multi-million dollar project with City of Hope, a National Cancer Institute (NCI) designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in Duarte, California, and other universities and health organisations to create a research cyberinfrastructure that includes a secure, Cloud-based data management platform. Read further...

Zack Smocha has joined Rescale, a Cloud platform provider of simulation software and high performance computing (HPC) solutions, as Vice President of Product Marketing, bringing two decades of experience in Cloud and enterprise software marketing to his new role. As a member of the Rescale executive team, Zack Smocha will play a key role in supporting Rescale's mission to provide the leading Cloud based high performance computing (HPC) and simulation platform empowering the world's engineers, scientists, developers and IT professionals to design innovative products and transform IT into unified, agile environments. Read further...

IBM has acquired Ustream Inc., a provider of Cloud-based live video streaming services. The move will extend the IBM Cloud platform to help enterprise clients unlock the value of video, a rapidly-evolving digital media and data asset. Financial terms were not disclosed. Read further...