The 13th Call for Proposals for PRACE Project Access (Tier-0) opened 7 March until 1 April (noon) 2016. Selected proposals will receive allocations to PRACE resources from September 2016 to September 2017. The 30 awarded projects are led by principal investigators from 9 different European countries. This Call also welcomed scientists and researchers from Argentina, Mexico and USA as collaborators in several projects. PRACE Hosting Member CINECA will offer for the first time core hours on their new Tier-0 system Marconi, composed of 2 partitions, one based on Intel Broadwell processors and one based on Intel KNL many-core processors. Read further...

Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) researcher Xevi Roca will receive a European Research Council Starting Grant, one of the European Union's most prestigious research grants, for a project to create new simulation methods to respond to the aviation industry's most pressing challenges. Xevi Roca, who has been working on geometry for aeronautical simulation since 2004, is proposing to integrate time as a dimension into the geometries of simulations. The aim is to improve the efficiency, accuracy and robustness of the aerodynamic performance simulations carried out on supercomputers such as BSC's MareNostrum. Read further...

As part of a new international network being deployed by the National Knowledge Network (NKN) - India's main NREN - a further 10Gbps of R&E connectivity is now operational between India and Europe. The new capacity is provided over two diverse cable systems from Mumbai to Amsterdam where it interconnects with GÉANT via Netherlight. This is additional to the TEIN project's EU-India connection which was upgraded from 2.5 to 10Gbps earlier this year, with NKN co-financing the link as a TEIN project partner. Read further...

Computer models developed at the National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark, can predict many of the harmful effects caused by different chemical substances. This has led to increased knowledge, which can be used to prioritize and assess the safety of thousands of chemicals worldwide without the use of laboratory animals. Researchers at the institute have received a prize from the Danish 3R-Center for their work. The purpose of the center is to find alternatives to animals testing. Read further...

PHENOMEN is a ground breaking project designed to harness the potential of combined phononics, photonics and radio-frequency (RF) electronic signals to lay the foundations of a new information technology. This new project, funded though the highly competitive H2020 FET-Open call, joins the efforts of three leading research institutes, three internationally recognised universities and a high-tech SME. The Consortium members kicked off the project with a meeting on September 16, 2016, at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), coordinated by ICREA Research Prof. Dr. Clivia M. Sotomayor-Torres, of the ICN2's Phononic and Photonic Nanostructures (P2N) Group. Read further...

Altair has acquired Solid Iris Technologies, a Greece-based technology company specializing in photorealistic rendering and visualization, with its high-end solution "Thea Render". The companies have built a relationship over the past several years, with Altair using Solid Iris' Thea Render superior technology to provide rendering functionality in its solidThinking Evolve concept design software. Read further...

Bright Computing, a provider of hardware-agnostic cluster and Cloud management software, has signed a reseller agreement with SGI, a global expert in high-performance solutions for compute, data analytics and data management. Read further...

In today's computer chips, memory management is based on what computer scientists call the principle of locality: If a programme needs a chunk of data stored at some memory location, it probably needs the neighbouring chunks as well. But that assumption breaks down in the age of Big Data, now that computer programmes more frequently act on just a few data items scattered arbitrarily across huge data sets. Since fetching data from their main memory banks is the major performance bottleneck in today's chips, having to fetch it more frequently can dramatically slow programme execution. Read further...

ESI Group, an innovator in Virtual Prototyping software and services for manufacturing industries worldwide, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Huawei, a global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider. The signature ceremony took place during the event HUAWEI CONNECT 2016 in Shanghai, China on September 1, 2016. The two parties will collaborate on High-Performance Computing (HPC) and Cloud computing to provide innovative industrial manufacturing solutions for customers in China and worldwide. Read further...

The Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) has launched OnDemand 3.0, a vastly upgraded version of its "one-stop shop" for access to its High Performance Computing services. This latest version of OSC's custom-built OnDemand web portal is the first to be based on Open OnDemand, an NSF-funded OSC project to develop an open-source web portal providing advanced web and graphical interfaces for HPC centres. Read further...

DataDirect Networks (DDN) has promoted Robert Triendl to senior vice president of global sales, marketing and field services. Leveraging his more than eight years of experience successfully leading DDN's Asia Pacific, European and Japanese markets, Robert Triendl will now focus on accelerating the worldwide adoption of DDN's end-to-end storage solutions, which enable organisations to speed time to discovery from their data, on premises and in the Cloud. Read further...

GridGain Systems, provider of enterprise-grade in-memory computing solutions based on Apache Ignite, is now offering the GridGain In-Memory Data Fabric deployed on Microsoft Azure. The newly available GridGain on Azure will help financial services organisations leverage Microsoft's integrated cloud services to rapidly and effectively deploy GridGain's distributed, massively parallel, in-memory solution. Read further...

Mellanox Technologies Ltd., a supplier of high performance cloud and storage networking solutions, has provided support for Cumulus Linux 3.1 on four new 10/25/50/100 Gb/s Ethernet switch platforms. The announcement enables Mellanox to accelerate the adoption of Open Networking for customers by offering a complete end-to-end solution of Spectrum-based Ethernet switches that are supported by Cumulus Linux, the best-in-class Open Network Operating System. Read further...

Mellanox Technologies Ltd., a supplier of high-performance, end-to-end interconnect solutions for data centre servers and storage systems, has made available 25Gb/s SR (short reach) Ethernet optical transceivers and Active Optical Cables (AOCs) that enable next generation servers and storage appliances to interface with 100Gb/s switches and routers. The new products were featured at the 18th China International Optoelectronic Expo, September 6-9, in Shenzhen, China in live demos using Mellanox 100Gb/s Spectrum Ethernet switches to aggregate traffic from four servers, each connected with 25G/s ConnectX-4 network adapters. Read further...

Dell Technologies has completed the acquisition of EMC Corporation, creating a unique family of businesses that provides the essential infrastructure for organisations to build their digital future, transform IT and protect their most important asset, information. This combination creates a $74 billion market leader with an expansive technology portfolio that solves complex problems for customers in the industry's fast-growing areas of hybrid Cloud, software-defined data centre, converged infrastructure, platform-as-a-service, data analytics, mobility and cybersecurity. Read further...

NetApp has introduced a new version of the NetApp SANtricity storage software. NetApp also introduced the new NetApp E2800, an entry-level all-flash array for midsize businesses and remote offices that need a simple and cost-effective solution to support data analytics applications. In addition, in collaboration with Zaloni, the data lake company, NetApp announced an innovative hybrid approach to data lifecycle management for the data lake. Read further...

Chelsio Communications Inc.'s line of Terminator 5 (T5) 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) iWARP- (RDMA/TCP) enabled Unified Wire adapters have achieved "Certified for Windows 10 Enterprise" hardware certification for Windows 10 Enterprise Client RDMA feature enabling high-speed access to Windows Server using SMB Direct. Windows 10 Enterprise Anniversary Update (AU) includes an inbox driver for Chelsio iWARP enabled 10/40GbE Unified Wire adapters. Read further...

DataDirect Networks (DDN) has launched the WOS8460 - a new object storage appliance that delivers cost-optimized capacity with enough performance to support the growing number of object use cases. Leveraging DDN unique capabilities, the WOS8460 delivers hard cost advantages, faster performance, higher availability and greater density, in configurations that can start smaller and scale in more granular increments than competing offerings. Read further...

With its new high-performance computing cluster, the fastest supercomputer in Alabama, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) can now execute tasks in a couple of hours that took an entire day with the equipment it had in 2015. UAB officials were joined at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on September 14 by Dell EMC North America President of Commercial Sales Bill Rodrigues, as well as faculty, staff and students who will benefit from the supercomputer, to celebrate the significant leap forward in UAB's research computing capabilities. Read further...

McGill University will receive more than CAD 1,1 million for CBRAIN, one of the world's most advanced computing platforms for brain research, through the Canada Foundation for Innovation's (CFI) Cyberinfrastructure Initiative. Read further...

Cirrascale Corporation will begin shipping the recently announced NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPU accelerators with 16GB HBM2 memory throughout its high-performance, deep learning product lines. Read further...

CSIRO through a Request for Tender is seeking responses from suitably qualified and experienced service providers for the supply, delivery, installation and maintenance of an Advanced Technology Cluster (ATC) for the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre as described in the Statement of Requirements and Tender Documentation. Read further...

Four Loyola University Maryland faculty members have been awarded a USD 280.120 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to build a high-performance computing (HPC) cluster that will exponentially expand research opportunities for faculty and students across disciplines. Read further...

Huawei, a global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, showcased its high-performance computing (HPC) solution at the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) China 2016. The solution features graphics processing unit (GPU) acceleration and warm water cooling technology for high-density computing. Read further...

Huawei released new servers based on Intel Rack Scale Design (Intel RSD) architecture at HUAWEI CONNECT 2016 . The introduction of the Huawei FusionServer E9000 Converged Architecture Blade Server and FusionServer X6800 High-Density Server highlights how Huawei's is striving to forge a new hyper-scale data centre ecosystem. Read further...

In the face of increasing bandwidth demands, ground-breaking research between the University of Bristol and the National Institute of Information and Communication Technology (NICT) in Japan, has demonstrated solutions for network infrastructure to address the looming network capacity crunch. Read further...

GridGain Systems, provider of enterprise-grade in-memory computing platform solutions based on Apache Ignite, has made available the GridGain Professional Edition 1.7, a fully supported version of Apache Ignite 1.7. The GridGain Professional Edition includes the latest version of Apache Ignite, plus patches that have not yet been released in Apache Ignite and high-value LGPL libraries. Key new features released in the GridGain Professional Edition 1.7 include non-collocated SQL joins and enhanced support for managing GridGain Professional Edition clusters using the GridGain Web Console. The Apache Ignite 1.7 release also gains enhanced integration with the complimentary GridGain Web Console online tool for deployment, management and monitoring. Read further...

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), located at Amsterdam Science Park, has founded its new spin-off Stokhos Emergency Mathematics. Stokhos provides software solutions which enable the proactive relocation of emergency services based on predictions of future demand. The company is based on research by CWI's Stochastics group and in cooperation with Delft University of Technology. On 14 September, Stokhos launched its first commercial product for the Flevoland ambulance region. Read further...

A team led by researchers at the University of California San Diego has captured in step-by-step atomic detail the surgical editing of DNA strands by CRISPR-Cas9, the innovative gene-splicing technology that in recent years has transformed the field of genetic engineering. Read further...

Using a unique computational approach to rapidly sample, in millisecond time intervals, proteins in their natural state of gyrating, bobbing, and weaving, a research team from UC San Diego and Monash University in Australia has identified promising drug leads that may selectively combat heart disease, from arrhythmias to cardiac failure. Read further...

Major technological advances have transformed our ability to collect, share and interpret data at an unprecedented scale, but computer scientists believe environmental science has yet to fully reap the rewards of these changes. Cities have capitalised on the "Internet of Things", where everyday devices and sensors are connected to the internet, and Cloud computing - remote storing of readily accessible information, changing the way many urbanites live and work. However, from flooding monitoring and real-time livestock tracking to data sharing among citizen scientists around the globe, technology can profoundly improve our understanding and management of the natural world. A Lancaster University professor has now been awarded a prestigious senior fellowship to bring about a step change in data-driven environmental science. Read further...

Children with congenital heart defects often undergo a battery of strenuous examinations and interventions. In the EU CARDIOPROOF project, Fraunhofer researchers have developed software to simulate certain interventions in advance. Preliminary results point to a reduced need to perform numerous interventions. Read further...

NVIDIA has unveiled the latest additions to its Pascal architecture-based deep learning platform, with new NVIDIA Tesla P4 and P40 GPU accelerators and new software that deliver massive leaps in efficiency and speed to accelerate inferencing production workloads for artificial intelligence services. Read further...

Under a new Strategy, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is committing to extending the probabilistic skill of its high-impact weather forecasts by three to six days over the next decade. Read further...

Analytics 4 Life (A4L), a Toronto-based eHealth company, has earned its second project award by Southern Ontario Smart Computing Innovation Platform (SOSCIP) and Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE). The focus of the new project is to create a proprietary machine learning computational algorithm that can analyze physiologic signals and identify patterns related to heart disease. Read further...

What do the human brain, the 3 billion base-pair human genome and a tiny cube of 216 atoms have in common? All of them, from the tiny cube to the 3-pound human brain, create incredibly complex computing challenges for University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) researchers, and aggressive investments in UAB's IT infrastructure have opened new possibilities in innovation, discovery and patient care. Read further...

Most people in the United States likely feel safe from Ebola - West Africa feels like it's worlds away. The USA is located very far geographically from the countries with the highest frequency of infections, like Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, and many US people aren't likely to be traveling to those places any time soon. But what about in the airports? Could you come into contact with someone who has contracted Ebola and find yourself infected? Read further...

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers, Professor Wendy K. Tam Cho and Yan Y. Liu recently won 1st place in the Common Cause 2016 First Amendment Gerrymander Standard Writing Competition with their proposal of a novel method for identifying partisan gerrymandering, which they created using the Blue Waters supercomputer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Read further...

Developers of atmospheric and oceanographic computer models have gotten a chance to hear about a truly innovative and unique piece of software being developed by scientists at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). Dr. Mike Ashworth from STFC's Scientific Computing Department showcased PSyclone, a software framework that automatically generates the parts of the code necessary to run on supercomputers. He presented the work of the STFC team that developed it - Rupert Ford, Andrew Porter and Karthee Sivalingam - at the 2016 MultiCore 6 workshop on 13-14 September in Boulder, Colorado. Read further...

A team of computer scientists and geneticists from Iowa State University, the University of Maryland and the University of Arkansas have demonstrated significant speed-ups of the epiSNP bioinformatics programme using the Edison supercomputer at the Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. The team used the application to perform pairwise comparisons of genotypes and how they affect traits such as height, weight or make-up of body tissues. Read further...

The Energy Department's Advanced Manufacturing Office has announced up to $3 million in available funding for manufacturers to use high-performance computing resources at the Department's national laboratories to tackle major manufacturing challenges. The High Performance Computing for Manufacturing (HPC4Mfg) programme enables innovation in U.S. manufacturing through the adoption of high performance computing (HPC) to advance applied science and technology in manufacturing, with an aim of increasing energy efficiency, advancing clean energy technology, and reducing energy's impact on the environment. Read further...

Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation, and IBM have signed a partnership that will enable Finland to utilize Watson cognitive computing to help doctors improve the health of its citizens, and strengthen and develop the Finnish innovation and business ecosystem in the fields of health and well-being. To facilitate the collaboration, IBM intends to establish a Watson Health Center of Excellence in Finland, the first Nordic Healthcare Competence Center, and the first National Imaging Center of Excellence outside the United States in Finland. These centres are expected to employ 150 people over the next few years. Read further...

Severe storms in the Atlantic can cause a tsunami-like wave that funnels into the Firth of Clyde, and when this coincides with high tides it leads to severe coastal flooding, according to a study by mathematicians at the University of Strathclyde. The researchers produced a computer simulation of storm surges in the sea level which have played a role in floods in recent years, including those during the hurricane which swept Scotland in December 2011. Read further...

A targeted way to manipulate beams of protons accelerated using ultrashort and ultraintense laser pulses has been demonstrated by a team of researchers led at the University of Strathclyde. The discovery could have a major impact on advancing smaller, cheaper, laser-driven particle accelerators and their potential applications. Read further...

A strategic partnership between the University of Michigan and software company Yottabyte promises to unleash a new wave of data-intensive research by providing a flexible computing Cloud for complex computational analyses of sensitive and restricted data. Read further...