Researchers Ready System to Explore Parallel
Computing
EE Times (03/13/08) Merritt, Rick
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley are nearly finished
building the Berkeley Emulation Engine version 3 (BEE3), an FPGA-based
computer that could help researchers find a parallel programming model for
advanced multicore processors. BEE3 is intended to help researchers
quickly prototype processors with hundreds or thousands of cores and find
new ways to program them. The most recent version of the computer was
designed as a commercially available system with significant help from
Microsoft Research. The system is the centerpiece of the Research
Accelerator for Multiple Processors (RAMP) program, a collaborative effort
involving Berkeley, Microsoft, Intel, and five other U.S. universities,
including MIT and Stanford. "Fundamentally, FPGAs are now large enough and
the tool suites good enough that a small number of people can build a
fairly substantial system," says Microsoft Research's Charles Thacker. "At
the Berkeley wireless lab they have already built a thousand-processor
machine with an array of these systems racked up." Thacker says BEE3 could
be used across a wide range of applications due to its flexibility and
substantial amount of RAM. He calls it the Swiss Army knife of computer
research tools.
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SC08 Technical Program Now Accepting Submissions
HPC Wire (03/14/08)
SC08 will begin accepting submissions for its technical program at the
conference Web site on March, 17, 2008. The top conference for high
performance computing, networking, storage, and analysis is seeking
technical papers on all aspects of applications, architecture, grids,
networks, performance, and system software, and will offer awards for Best
Paper, Best Student Paper, and the $10,000 ACM Gordon Bell Prize.
Participants must submit abstracts by April 4, and paper manuscripts and
Gordon Bell contributions by April 7. Submissions for tutorials, panels,
and independent workshops are also due on April 7. The deadline for
posters is July 31. There will be a Best Poster Award, and students will
be eligible to participate in the ACM Student Research Challenge. More
information on the technical program can be found at
http://sc08.supercomputing.org/?pg=techprogram.html, and submissions
are to be made at
https://submissions.supercomputing.org/. ACM and IEEE Computer Society
are the sponsors of SC08, which is scheduled for Nov. 15-21 at the Austin
Convention Center in Texas.
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Lecturer Criticizes Accuracy of the Voting Process
Oregon Daily Emerald (03/13/08) Davis, Trevor
Former ACM President Barbara Simons will discuss the policy related to
voting machines, security, and the possibility of Internet voting on
Thursday at the University of Oregon. "As we've been learning, they're
just poorly engineered and tend to break a lot," Simons says of voting
machines. E-voting became an interest of Simons around 2000, and in 2001
she helped produce a report on Internet voting as a member of the National
Workshop on Internet Voting. "The more I learned, the more appalled I
got," Simons says. Advocates of the technology initially saw e-voting
machines as a way to make voting more accessible to people with
disabilities, and then lawmakers at the federal, state, and local levels
were overtaken with a gold rush mentality to purchase and deploy systems
that vendors promised would work, she says. Concerns about the security of
e-voting machine will lead people to question the results of elections,
Simons warns.
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Gates, in Valedictory to Congress, Calls for Better
Schooling, More Visas
Washington Post (03/13/08) P. D3; Hart, Kim
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Wednesday urged the House Committee on
Science and Technology to find more money for math and science education,
more funds for research, and more visas for foreign workers. Gates said
the measures are necessary if the United States is to maintain its
competitive edge in technology innovation. Gates said that some of the
most talented graduates in math, science, and engineering are temporary
residents that are unable to get the visas they need to work in the U.S.
He said the fact that other countries' smartest people want to come to the
United States is a huge advantage that the nation is essentially throwing
away. "U.S. innovation has always been based in part on foreign-born
scientists and researchers," Gates said. Much of the hearing focused on
Gates' recommendation to raise the annual maximum of 65,000 H-1B visas.
Although some lawmakers support raising the H-1B visa cap, others argue
that the visas take jobs away from American workers and suppress wages.
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$17 Million Grant to Advance Simulations of Hypersonic
Flight
Stanford Report (03/10/08) Orenstein, David
Stanford University researchers have reached a $17 million, five-year
agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security
Administration to develop predictive simulations of hypersonic flight
vehicles. "Predicting phenomena on a computer using simulation technology
doesn't require the humongous expenses of physical flight testing and
laboratory testing," says project director Parviz Moin. "But hypersonic
flight systems cannot be predicted well with today's state-of-the-art
simulation capabilities." Hypersonic flight is reached at speeds at least
five times faster than the speed of sound--about 3,400 miles per hour at
30,000 feet. Before the last decade, sustained hypersonic flight had only
been achieved with rockets. However, rockets must carry their own oxygen
supply while jets can use the oxygen in the atmosphere, making them more
practical for transportation. The primary focus of the project will be the
application of verified and validated computational simulations to predict
the behavior of complex systems that do not allow for routine
experimentation. The researchers' primary challenge will be to develop
algorithms that can model the unique physical phenomena that take place at
hypersonic speeds, as turbulence, aerodynamics, combustion, thermal loads,
and shockwaves all behave differently at Mach 10 than in conventional
airplanes.
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Video Road Hogs Stir Fear of Internet Traffic Jam
New York Times (03/13/08) P. A1; Lohr, Steve
The increasing visual richness of online communications and entertainment,
including video clips and movies, social networks, and multiplayer games,
poses a threat that could cause massive Internet traffic delays,
researchers warn. Some analysts estimate that YouTube consumed as much
bandwidth in 2007 than the entire Internet did in 2000. In a report
published last November, Nemertes Research projected that Internet demand
could outpace network capacity by 2011. However, even those most concerned
over the Internet traffic surge say it poses more of a challenge than an
impending catastrophe, and most are not predicting a lights-out Internet
crash. Instead, they warn that Internet users could experience sluggish
download speeds and difficulty with data-heavy services. Nemertes
President Johna Till Johnson says the Internet will not collapse, but there
will be a growing category of tasks that will no longer be able to be
completed over the internet. Johnson anticipates that Internet demand will
grow by 100 percent of more per year. Others expect that Internet growth
will more likely be about 50 percent per year. Meanwhile, analysts note
that routers are getting faster, fiber-optic transmissions are improving,
and the software used for managing data packets is getting smarter.
Nevertheless, experts agree that if American investment doesn't keep up,
the country risks falling behind countries that have made higher-speed
Internet access a priority.
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Web Mashups Made Easy
Technology Review (03/12/08) Greene, Kate
Intel Research's Mash Maker project is working to make it possible for
people to use their Web browsers to combine information from different
sites. For example, if someone was looking for apartments on Craigslist,
they could add information about nearby restaurants from Yelp, or put the
apartment listings on Google Map. Mash Maker's goal is to allow people to
create their own custom-made Web. "Right now, the Web is a collection of
islands; each has its own information, but they aren't really
interconnected and personalized for you," says Intel researcher Robert
Ennals. "We're trying to move to where the Web is a single source of
interconnected knowledge, presenting information that you want to see the
way you want to see it." Other companies have similar projects in
development. Last year, Microsoft introduced Popfly, a programming
environment that makes it easy for nonexperts to build mashups. Yahoo
Pipes is another project that allows people to combine data from a variety
of sources. IBM is working on Lotus Mashups, a program designed to enable
users to combine data from different business applications. "The Holy
Grail is codeless programming," says Microsoft's John Montgomery. "We're
all converging on this idea of end-user programming, which isn't really
programming, coupled with community integration."
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MIT Names Its Top 10 Emerging Technologies for
2008
The Inquirer (UK) (03/13/08) Orion, Egan
Graphene transistors will be one of the top emerging technologies of 2008,
according to researchers at MIT. Microchips built with graphene have the
potential to work faster than silicon-based circuits, produce less heat,
and conduct it away more rapidly. The MIT researchers are high on nano
radio, in which carbon nanotubes are used to build tiny radios for
applications such as medical diagnostics, computer interfaces, and personal
communications devices. They see electromagnetic resonance being used to
bring wireless power to devices. They expect significant progress will be
made in integrating the centralized data synchronicity of Web-based "cloud
computing" applications with localized data presence and processing to
deliver offline Web applications. Seven of MIT's top 10 emerging
technologies are in computer science and information technology
disciplines, and the other IT-related developments involve modeling
surprise, probabilistic chips, and reality mining. The new technologies
are at different stages of development, and some are already in use
today.
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Reading, Writing ... and Engineering
Wall Street Journal (03/13/08) P. D1; Chaker, Anne Marie
A growing number of schools are adding engineering to the curriculum to
address concerns that American students are falling behind foreign
competition in math and science. There has been a decline in the number of
Americans interested in engineering, with 62 percent of engineering
doctoral degrees awarded to foreign nationals in 2006. Many corporations,
including Intel, have provided funding for engineering programs, such as
the Engineering is Elementary program that is used at Odyssey Elementary
School in Colorado. Over 2,200 middle and high schools are offering
engineering courses with support from the non-profit group Project Lead the
Way. Some states, including Massachusetts and New Jersey, have already
added some engineering content to state education requirements. The
Department of Education has plans to integrate engineering concepts into
federal assessments as early as 2009. While many of the high school
courses involve using computers and engineering software, the Engineering
is Elementary program consists of 14 units that touch upon the fields of
engineering. The units are introduced to the students through stories,
such as the story of a girl who tries to create a better place for her pet
turtle to live, which introduces the environmental engineering section. In
order for an elementary school to purchase materials for each student, it
would cost approximately $6,000. However, a program can be started for as
little as $40, which provides teacher's with lesson plans and one storybook
to be read to the students. These programs have helped increase student
interest in engineering. A survey of 100 high-school seniors who completed
an engineering curriculum showed that 52 percent were interested in
majoring in engineering in college.
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Bush Pushes Cybersecurity
USA Today (03/14/08) P. 6A; Wolf, Richard
Attacks on federal government information systems rose by 152 percent last
year, according to the Department of Homeland Security. While the rise can
be attributed partly to better reporting methods, officials admit hackers
and foreign governments are becoming more successful at breaking into
government networks. President Bush announced a 10 percent increase in
cybersecurity spending for the coming fiscal year, bringing total funding
to $7.3 billion, a 73 percent increase since 2004. For DHS Secretary
Michael Chertoff and members of Congress, the budget boost could not have
come soon enough. "There are more bad guys out there," says Sen. Tom
Carper (D-Del.). The lawmaker chaired a Homeland Security subcommittee
hearing recently during which he told attendees that in 31 percent of
breaches, "agencies do not know who took the information or how much
information was taken." This is no surprise to the Government
Accountability Office, whose separate study found that 20 of 24 major
government agencies have inadequate cybersecurity defenses. Meanwhile, the
DHS is completing Cyber Storm II, a week-long simulated attack to test the
strengths of federal agencies against attacks on communications,
information technology, and chemical and transportation systems.
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Robotic Drumstick Keeps Novices on the Beat
New Scientist (03/10/08) Inman, Mason
Computer scientist Graham Grindlay has developed the Haptic Guidance
System (HAGUS), a machine that uses a haptic interface to teach people how
to play the drums. HAGUS, which Grindlay developed at MIT, has a drumstick
attached to a set of motors. The user grasps the drumstick with a hand,
straps their arm in position with the adjacent brace, and lets the action
of the motors guide their hand. A music teacher can program specific beats
for HAGUS to teach to beginners. Grindlay found that users will be able to
learn new rhythms more quickly, play more accurately, and have better
timing than if they tried to play a beat after just hearing it. "More
difficult, coordinated motions would be especially good for this kind of
system," Grindlay says. His research does a "wonderful job" of showing how
haptics can help beginning musicians, says Chris Chafe of Stanford
University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics.
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Wireless Networks That Build Themselves
ICT Results (03/06/08)
European researchers are working on the RUNES project, an effort to
develop software tools for enabling mobile devices to form self-organizing
wireless networks across a variety of communications technologies. RUNES
(Reconfigurable Ubiquitous Network Embedded Systems) consultant and
dissemination manager Dr. Lesley Hanna says an ad-hoc network needs to be
able to assemble itself from nearby devices without a human administrator,
and must be able to adapt as devices move into and out of wireless range.
Hanna says the challenge is building self-managing networks that work
reliably on a large scale, with a variety of operating systems, and with
low-power consumption. RUNES created software that would bridge the gap
between the operating systems used by mobile sensor nodes and the
high-level applications that use data from the sensors. RUNES middleware
is modular and flexible so programmers can create applications without
having to have extensive knowledge on the detailed working of the network
devices supplying the data. "A lot of people have been looking at embedded
systems networking, but so far there has been a reluctance to take the
plunge commercially," Hanna says. "RUNES' open-source model is an
excellent way to stimulate progress."
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Computer Teams From Around the World to Battle in Banff
Next Month
Canadian Press (03/12/08) Bennett, Dean
The 32nd annual Battle of the Brains will take place next month in Banff,
Alberta, Canada, when about 300 students from around the world gather to
compete to solve computer problems. IBM's Doug Heintzman says the contest
is one of the best ways to get access to the world's best and brightest
computer students. On April 9, 100 teams composed of three students each
will work on the same 10 problems, ranging in difficulty from the simple to
the impossible. The team that answers the most questions in five hours
wins. Heintzman says the problems are fundamental questions of grid
theory, series theory, or math or physics presented as real-life scenarios.
Each student is chosen for an area of expertise, including grid series,
deep math, deep physics, algorithms, programming, data structures,
numerical computations, artificial intelligence, text processing, or
pattern recognition. The competition has recently been dominated by teams
from Asia, eastern Europe, and Russia. The winners receive scholarships
and other prizes.
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Molecular Machine Takes Control
MSNBC (03/10/08) Boyle, Alan
The first molecular machine capable of parallel processing has been
announced by Japanese researchers. Seventeen duroquinone molecules were
coaxed to assemble into the machine on a gold surface, and the control
molecule can be flipped to any one of four configurations with electrical
pulses from the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope; those flips can
subsequently alter the states of the other 16 molecules. This breakthrough
fuels visions of nanofactories that can manufacture vast quantities of
custom-designed molecules, potentially enabling revolutionary medical
applications such as non-surgical removal of brain tumors, says Anirban
Bandyopadhyay of Japan's International Center for Young Scientists. The
molecular machine is still not ready for practical use partly because the
input/output device needs refinement, with Bandyopadhyay saying that other
techniques would be devised for working devices. He says that researchers
intend to build a massively parallel supercomputer that combines cellular
automation and the human brain's neural network. "In this concept, highly
interconnected arrays of cells communicate with all their neighbors at a
time, following a particular equation," Bandyopadhyay says. "In principle,
these unconventional processors are astronomically powerful compared to
existing processors."
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Educating the Computer
Washington Technology (03/10/08) Vol. 23, No. 4, P. 28; Beizer, Doug
Lockheed Martin researchers are working on the Generalized Integrated
Learning Architecture (GILA), a type of machine learning designed to create
new computer-learning capabilities that let systems learn complex workflows
by observing warfighters performing regular duties. GILA, a Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency project, is focused on tasks such as air
operations center planning and military medical logistics, which should
make it possible to create multiple types of military decision-support
systems that learn by watching experts instead of relying on hand-encoded
knowledge, which is expensive and prone to errors. "This is fairly new
ground in the sense that it's an approach to using machine learning that
hasn't really been pursued to a great degree by researchers," says program
manager Ken Whitebread. The successful testing of the first phase of the
technology has led to a phase two award for Lockheed Martin's Advanced
Technology Laboratories. During the second phase of the project, Lockheed
Martin is attempting to enable a computer to learn to manage combat air
space using manned and unmanned aircraft. The technology is designed to
help create orders by automatically learning flight planners' tasks from
experts. Initially, the machine-learning technology will be used as an
added layer of capability available to the Pentagon, and not as a total
replacement for current procedures, strategies, and techniques. "The point
is to be able to get the system to learn the task on its own without having
to do extremely expensive development of the program," Whitebread says.
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ICANN Looks Toward End of U.S. Agreement in '09
IDG News Service (03/07/08) Gross, Grant
ICANN is considering what it will do when its memorandum of understanding
with the U.S. Department of Commerce ends in Sept. 2009 as part of a
midterm review of the agreement that included public comments at a hearing
held by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in
February. ICANN's agreement with the Commerce Department was renewed in
2006, but the organization has taken steps toward transparency and
independence over the past few years, says Paul Levins, ICANN's executive
officer and vice president of corporate affairs. Although some credit the
Joint Project Agreement for ICANN's success and claim that it operates with
little oversight from the Commerce Department, representatives from foreign
countries have criticized the U.S. government's oversight of a global
organization. Even after the JPA expires, ICANN still has a contract to
operate the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority with the United States, so
they would not be completely free of oversight, Levins says. In addition
to governance issues, ICANN critics say the organization has to do more to
cater to the international Internet community. "It is our opinion that
ICANN is living up to its mandate and that the endeavor of transitioning
ICANN into a private sector entity is taking shape," wrote Kenya Network
Information Centre Chairman Anthony Mugambi. "Conclusion of the JPA would,
however, provide the next logical step toward full transition some time in
the future." Levins says ICANN wants to move toward autonomy while
ensuring that the Internet addressing system remains beyond the reach of
any one entity.
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Next Generation of Video Games Will Be Mental
New Scientist (03/13/08)No. 2647, P. 40; Graham-Rowe, Duncan
The first video games that allow users to drive game action with the power
of their minds could debut commercially this year thanks to breakthroughs
with companies that are developing hardware and software that can
reportedly detect and harness brainwaves. This milestone hinges on the
incorporation of biofeedback into the games themselves, whereas up to now
biofeedback has been used by game designers to assess new products. Emotiv
has devised a sensor-equipped headset that lets players control game
aspects, such as manipulating on-screen objects, by thought. Helping fuel
the movement toward mind-controlled video games is the success of
innovative products such as Nintendo's Wii console, which features a
gesture interface for game control via a handheld wireless motion sensor.
"With the Wii, Nintendo did something right in designing a suite of
tailored games" that take full advantage of its unique interface, notes
Microsoft researcher Desney Tan. Manual control will still be a primary
element of mind-game products, which will offer additional features through
biofeedback. Perhaps the most formidable challenge the emerging mind-game
industry faces is interference, as signals from nearby electrical devices
and muscular activity can distort brainwaves. Developing software that can
identify and filter out such signals is the solution, says NeuroSky CEO
Stanley Yang.
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Different Engines
Computerworld (03/10/08) Vol. 42, No. 11, P. 34; Anthes, Gary
Research teams across the United States are constructing mechanical
computers under the aegis of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency, which is seeking machines that are rugged enough to stay
operational under extremely high temperatures. Scientists say
"nanomechanical" computers will boast far more energy efficiency than
traditional semiconductors while generating less heat and enduring voltage
spikes that can prove destructive to regular processors. GE Global
Research has grown nanowires from a silicon base via a "bottom-up
self-assembly" method. The aim is to create an electromechanical relay
switch produced by mating nanowires to conventional circuit etching via
lithography, with the creation of logic gates the eventual goal.
Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have created
a transistor fashioned from "nanomechanical pillars," and professor Robert
Blick says he has coaxed the pillars to function as physical switches he
calls nanoelectromechanical single-electron transistors. Blick and
colleagues will attempt to engineer nanomechanical memories from pillars
that can represent 0 or 1, depending on whether they swing left or right.
Speed limitations are likely to initially restrict nanomechanical computers
to applications where extremely rapid processors are unnecessary and in
places where temperatures could reach several hundred degrees Celsius,
Blick says. "In the future, there will be microcontrollers everywhere," he
predicts. "They will be very simple processors based on alternative
principles, where one is endurance to extreme environments and the second
is energy efficiency."
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