As of July 1st the European Commission (EC) has been reorganised in a way that affects European HPC and exascale computing. The most important part is the formation of a new unit (department) "High Performance Computing and Quantum Technology" headed by Gustav Kalbe. This unit will support HPC and exascale initiatives for science and industry, and handle the new Quantum Technology programme of the EC. The pan-European supercomputer infrastructure PRACE is now handled by this new unit. Read further...

In the first session of Distinguished Speakers, chaired by Erich Strohmaier, at ISC 2016 in Frankfurt, Germany, Yutaka Ishikawa from RIKEN AICS introduced the Japanese national project established to make the next machine after the K supercomputer, the so-called "post K". This will be a two-year mission. Together with vendor partner Fujitsu, RIKEN will develop a wide range of application codes, to run on the "post K", in order to solve major social and science issues. The Japanese government selected 9 social and scientific priority issues and their R&D organisations. Read further...

The 2013 book "Community, Competition and Citizen Science" by Anne Holohan from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, documents the history of volunteer computing is now available online. Read further...

The era of quantum computers is one step closer as a result of research published in the current issue of the journalScience. The research team has devised and demonstrated a new way to pack a lot more quantum computing power into a much smaller space and with much greater control than ever before. The research advance, using a 3-dimensional array of atoms in quantum states called quantum bits - or qubits - was made by David S. Weiss, professor of physics at Penn State University, and three students on his lab team. Read further...

ISC Group, the organizers of ISC High Performance, have held a very successful conference, drawing 3,092 attendees from 53 countries to the annual high performance computing forum, exceeding all previous attendance records. The conference and exhibition were held in Frankfurt, Germany from June 19-23. Read further...

At their 21st meeting, the PRACE Council, the highest decision-making body of the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, elected a new Chair and Vice-Chair for the coming 2 years. Read further...

The Fourth Call for Applications under SHAPE is open from 22 June to 9 September 2016. SHAPE which stands for SME HPC Adoption Programme in Europe, is a pan-European programme supported by PRACE. The Programme aims to raise awareness and provide European SMEs with the expertise necessary to take advantage of the innovation possibilities created by High-Performance Computing (HPC), thus increasing their competitiveness. The programme allows SMEs to benefit from the expertise and knowledge developed within the top-class PRACE Research Infrastructure. Read further...

International Data Corporation (IDC) has announced the tenth round of recipients of the HPC Innovation Excellence Award at ISC16, a major international supercomputing conference, in Frankfurt, Germany. This year's winners include The Centre for Computational Medicine, University of Toronto; Walt Disney Animation Studios; DreamWorks Animation; Fortissimo/Ergolines GPUdb; United States Postal Service; Novartis/Amazon Web Services (AWS)/Cycle Computing; and the University of Rochester Medical Center. They join the elite ranks of over 60 previous recipients from around the world, the first having been announced in 2011. Read further...

At the opening session of ISC16 the winner of the PRACE ISC Award was announced by Alison Kennedy, Managing Director of PRACE. PRACE welcomed interested visitors at its booth and invited them to listen to various presentations about PRACE activities. The ISC 2016 PRACE Training Day Workshop gave the opportunity to have an open dialogue with the HPC ecosystem stakeholders about the training needs for future HPC experts. Read further...

A new age in high-performance computing (HPC) is about to begin at the University of Melbourne. The University has launched a new HPC service called Spartan. It combines traditional HPC with a flexible Cloud computing component. No other university has put a system like this into production. Read further...

RSC Group, a developer and system integrator of innovative solutions for high-performance computing (HPC) segment and data centres in Russia and CIS has demonstrated a new generation of its high performance, scalable and energy-efficient RSC Tornado solution with direct liquid cooling based on the newest multi-core Intel Xeon Phi processor - previously code named as Knights Landing - on the day of the global launch of this product at ISC'16 international conference and exhibition. The new RSC solution has improved footprint and computing density, high energy efficiency and provides stable operation of computing nodes in "hot water" mode at +63 °С cooling agent temperature at node inputs. This confirms the leading position of the company in the field of bringing the latest technologies for global supercomputer industry to the market and meeting growing customer demands. Read further...

The Centre for Modelling & Simulation (CFMS), a specialist in high value design capability has awarded the contract for the refresh of its high performance computing infrastructure to Cray Inc., a global expert in supercomputing. CFMS has selected the Cray CS400 cluster supercomputer, utilising Intel Xeon processor E5-2600v v4 product family, formerly codenamed "Broadwell" with system storage provided by ArcaStream. The selection of Cray by CFMS marks the first-ever Cray system installed in the city of Bristol, since opening its Europe, Middle East and Africa headquarters in June 2015. Read further...

Officials from the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and government representatives dedicated a new supercomputing facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The $9.8 million modular and sustainable facility provides the Laboratory flexibility to accommodate future advances in computer technology and meet a rapidly growing demand for unclassified high-performance computing (HPC). The facility houses supercomputing systems in support of NNSA's Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program. ASC is an essential and integral part of NNSA's Stockpile Stewardship Programme to ensure the safety, security and effectiveness of the nation's nuclear deterrent without additional underground testing. Read further...

Particle physicists using the CSCS supercomputer 'Piz Daint' have determined what is known as the scalar quark content of the proton. Now they hope, amongst other things, that this will make it easier to detect and research dark matter. Read further...

A group of physicists from the Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics, the Lomonosov Moscow State University, has learned to use a personal computer for calculations of complex equations of quantum mechanics, usually solved with help of supercomputers. This PC does the job much faster. An article about the results of the work has been published in the journalComputer Physics Communications. Read further...

Gravitational waves captured by space-based detectors could help identify the origins of supermassive black holes, according to new computer simulations of the Universe. Scientists led by Durham University's Institute for Computational Cosmology ran the huge cosmological simulations that can be used to predict the rate at which gravitational waves caused by collisions between the monster black holes might be detected. The amplitude and frequency of these waves could reveal the initial mass of the seeds from which the first black holes grew since they were formed 13 billion years ago and provide further clues about what caused them and where they formed, the researchers said. Read further...

At Vice President Biden's National Cancer Moonshot Summit, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and IBM Watson Health have launched a public-private partnership to help doctors expand and scale access to precision medicine over the next two years for 10,000 American veterans with cancer. Read further...

A "more realistic" computer model, created with the aid of Gordon at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego, paints a new picture of global warming's impact on the complex processes that drive ocean mixing in the vast eddies swirling off the California coast. The new model, published in the July issue ofNature Geosciences, more accurately describes how global warming affects the winds and circulation in the California Current system that runs parallel to the coast, and how previous models, based largely on offshore winds generated by global warming, misrepresented what was actually happening. Read further...

Molecular dynamics simulations at the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) are helping scientists get closer to directly observing how and why water is essential to life as we know it. A study in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesprovides the strongest evidence yet that proteins - the large and complex molecules that fold into particular shapes to enable biological reactions - can't fold themselves. Read further...

Nine projects, a number of which have applications to atmospheric science issues, were recently chosen to receive computational time and storage space on the supercomputer in Cheyenne. University of Wyoming (UW) faculty members and, in one case, a graduate student, will head projects that will use the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC). Each project was critically reviewed by an external panel of experts and evaluated on the experimental design, computational effectiveness, efficiency of resource use, and broader impacts such as how the project involves both UW and NCAR researchers; strengthens UW's research capacity; enhances UW's computational programmes; or involves research in a new or emerging field. Read further...

Laconia, the new supercomputing cluster at Michigan State University's (MSU) Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research (iCER) was ranked no. 205 on the TOP500 list, and no. 30 on the Green 500 list. Both lists are maintained by TOP500.org, which has tracked and compiled the 500 most powerful computer systems in the world since 1993. Read further...

DataDirect Networks (DDN) is the dominant storage provider of the world's fastest supercomputers for the eighth consecutive year with storage solutions that power more than 70 percent of identifiable sites on the most recent TOP500.org rankings list. The prestigious TOP500 list ranks the largest supercomputing environments by performance capabilities, and recognizes the vendors and technologies that power the most data intensive environments on the globe. Read further...

After a detailed review and selection process, Pfizer has selected Oracle Health Sciences InForm Cloud Service and the Oracle Siebel Clinical Trial Management and Monitoring Cloud Service to help manage and monitor its more than 300 clinical trials a year and continue to provide best-in-class solutions. Read further...

IBM has introduced new advancements for Bluemix OpenWhisk, its event-driven programming model which utilizes Docker containers. The new tools will allow developers to build feature-rich, intuitive apps which easily connect into the Internet of Things, as well as tap into advanced services such as cognitive, analytics and more - without the need to deploy and manage extra infrastructure. Read further...

Oracle has done major new additions to the SPARC platform that for the first time bring the advanced security, efficiency and simplicity of SPARC to the Cloud. Built on the new SPARC S7 microprocessor, the latest additions to the SPARC platform include new Cloud services, engineered systems and servers. Read further...