The Evolution of NAMD: A Scalability Story from Single-Core to GPU Boosted

On today’s episode of “The Interview” with The Next Platform, we take a look at the evolution of the NAMD molecular dynamics and how the introduction of GPU computing upended performance expectations and set the stage for new metrics now that the Volta GPU architecture will be available on large supercomputers like the Summit machine coming to Oak Ridge National Lab.

Our guest is well known for being part of the team that won a Gordon Bell Prize in 2002 for work on scaling NAMD. Dr. Jim Phillips is a Senior Research Programmer in the NCSA Blue Waters Project …

The Evolution of NAMD: A Scalability Story from Single-Core to GPU Boosted was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Lenovo introduces new water-cooled server technology

Lenovo has introduced a new high-density server “tray” for high-performance computing (HPC) environments with the newest generation of water cooling technology it co-developed with a German HPC firm.Unlike your typical water-cooled system, where the water is chilled almost to a drinkable state, the ThinkSystem SD650 high-density server tray — so called because of its design and shape — is designed to operate using warm water, up to 50°C, or 122°F.Read also: Data center cooling market set to explode in the coming years There is a mindset that CPUs have to be chilled as though they were cold cuts, when Intel says they can handle much higher temperatures. Xeons can handle temps of up to 75°C without becoming unstable or crashing.To read this article in full, please click here

Lenovo introduces new water-cooled server technology

Lenovo has introduced a new high-density server “tray” for high-performance computing (HPC) environments with the newest generation of water cooling technology it co-developed with a German HPC firm.Unlike your typical water-cooled system, where the water is chilled almost to a drinkable state, the ThinkSystem SD650 high-density server tray — so called because of its design and shape — is designed to operate using warm water, up to 50°C, or 122°F.Read also: Data center cooling market set to explode in the coming years There is a mindset that CPUs have to be chilled as though they were cold cuts, when Intel says they can handle much higher temperatures. Xeons can handle temps of up to 75°C without becoming unstable or crashing.To read this article in full, please click here

Reaction: Billing by the Hour

A very common mistake I see among engineers of all stripes is a failure to fully appreciate the value of time—both what it is worth, and how to make your time more valuable.

What I normally see is something like this—I should be making $x/hour, because I have this specific experience, or that specific skill set. This focus on hourly pay, however, is actually counter productive. For instance, I recently ran across an article in a publication for graphic designers and illustrators (a world I have followed since I lived it in many years ago)—

Billing by the hour is the most popular pricing method across the world in most industries. Of course, there are many web designers/developers out there who make a great living by using the hourly billing method, but in my opinion, value-based billing is far better than hourly billing. —Kyle Prinsloo @Web Designer Depot

To begin, what does Kyle mean when he says to “bill by value” rather than billing by the hour? Once, when I went into a lawyers office, I noticed he had a sign on the wall that said, “Lawyers don’t charge by the bullet.” The point the lawyer was making Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: If applications speak in sessions, shouldn’t your router be session smart?

My new iPhone X actually recognizes me! This is an example of Smart Technology.Most of us are expecting a revolution of products and services that have embedded intelligence or smarts. Medical diagnostic support is being aided by computer intelligence with the goal to improve the physician’s understanding of the patient to improve the diagnosis, therapies and resulting patient outcomes without adding more burden on the clinician. Look at cars – now, autonomous self-driving vehicles have the potential to alleviate congestion and improve the environment in ways we couldn’t imagine.To perform facial recognition, the iPhone X must understand the language of faces. This includes attributes of faces, such as shape of eyes, noses, cheekbones, and jaw. It’s safe to say that any smart system needs to understand the language of its purpose. Self-driving cars must understand the language of driving which includes maps, roads, signs, speed limits, weather, and traffic signals. Smart medical diagnostics need to understand the language of medicine, including possible diagnosis and probabilities.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: If applications speak in sessions, shouldn’t your router be session smart?

My new iPhone X actually recognizes me! This is an example of Smart Technology.Most of us are expecting a revolution of products and services that have embedded intelligence or smarts. Medical diagnostic support is being aided by computer intelligence with the goal to improve the physician’s understanding of the patient to improve the diagnosis, therapies and resulting patient outcomes without adding more burden on the clinician. Look at cars – now, autonomous self-driving vehicles have the potential to alleviate congestion and improve the environment in ways we couldn’t imagine.To perform facial recognition, the iPhone X must understand the language of faces. This includes attributes of faces, such as shape of eyes, noses, cheekbones, and jaw. It’s safe to say that any smart system needs to understand the language of its purpose. Self-driving cars must understand the language of driving which includes maps, roads, signs, speed limits, weather, and traffic signals. Smart medical diagnostics need to understand the language of medicine, including possible diagnosis and probabilities.To read this article in full, please click here

Starting as an Engineering Manager

Starting as an Engineering Manager

I joined Cloudflare last week as an Engineering Manager, having previously spent 4 years working as the head of the software engineering community in the UK Government’s Digital Service (GDS). You only get one chance to be a new starter at each new place, so it’s important to make the most of the experience. Also, the job of Engineering Manager is different in every organisation, so it’s important to understand what the expectations and need for the role is in Cloudflare.

To help with this, I started by sketching out some objectives for my first week.

  • Meet all my team members in a 1 to 1 meeting
  • Know the skills and motivations of each team member
  • Write down the expectations of my manager and team
  • Write down the scope of the job
  • Write a list of technologies to get an understanding of
  • Be mentored by one of the team in one of these technologies
  • Review what I can do to help with diversity and inclusion
  • Understand the management structure - draw a diagram of it
  • Spend 30 minutes with the most senior person I can to understand their aims
  • Play with the product myself

Some of these are a bit Continue reading

We’ve added another new Cyber Ops course to our video library

Log into your members account or visit ine.com to check out Andrew Crouthamel’s newest Cyber Ops course; CCNA Cyber Ops Technology Course: SECOPS 210-255.

 

Why Study Cyber Ops?

Cisco’s CCNA Cyber Ops cetification provides individuals with the knowledge to identify and respond to security incidents. This certification provides a path to working in a security operations center and security positions. As a CCNA level certification, Cyber Ops provides introductory knowledge so one may be aware of the security landscape, understand security concepts and general networking.

About This Course

This course is taught by Andrew Crouthamel and is 1 hour and 22 minutes long. This is a CCNA level course and will cover the exam topics of the SECOPS 210-255 Exam.

What You’ll Learn

Topics covered in this course include: endpoint analysis and forensics, NetFlow and IPFIX, and the importance of data analysis. Students will also review incident response plans, various computer security teams, and compliance frameworks such as PCI, HIPAA, and SOX.

About The Instructor

Andrew is a seasoned IT engineer with over 12 years of experience. He started out in IT as an Assistant Computer Technician, blowing dust out of computers for a school district, moving up Continue reading

Striking Practical Computational Balance

The phenomenal complexity of computing is not decreasing. Charts of growth, investment and scale continue to follow a logarithmic curve.

But how is computational balance to be maintained with any level of objectivity under such extreme circumstances? How do we plan for this known, and yet highly unknown challenge of building balanced systems to operate at scale? The ever more bewildering set of options (e.g. price lists now have APIs) may, if not managed with utmost care, result in chaos and confusion.

This first in a series of articles will set some background and perspective on the …

Striking Practical Computational Balance was written by James Cuff at The Next Platform.

7 transportation IoT predictions from Cisco

Cisco is one of the biggest proponents — and potential beneficiaries — of the Internet of Things (IoT). The networking giant is pushing IoT solutions in a number of areas, not least of which is the transporation sector.To learn more about how the company sees the future of IoT playing out in the world of connected transporation, I spoke (via email) with Kyle Connor, Cisco’s transportation industry principal.Connor covered a lot of ground, but here are what I consider his seven most important points, along with my reactions to them:To read this article in full, please click here

Most powerful Internet of Things companies

Billions of devices, lots of opportunityImage by ThinkstockThe predictions are getting a bit lurid – the Internet of Things will expand to around 20 billion connected devices by 2020, according to Gartner. (Other estimates range as high as ten times that figure.) MarketsandMarkets says that the market will expand from $170 billion last year to over half a trillion dollars by 2022. So who will be the biggest players in this huge and growing market? Find out here. (Note: Companies are listed in alphabetical order.) To read this article in full, please click here

The Week in Internet News: Blockchain Fights Slavery in the Seafood Industry

Blockchain vs. slavery: Provenance, a London NGO, is using Blockchain to add transparency to seafood supply chains, in an effort to reduce the practice of slavery in the seafood industry in Southeast Asia. Blockchain can create end-to-end traceability for seafood products by storing data on all kinds of transactional history. This can help NGOs track suppliers using slaves and abusive employment practices, reports Forbes.

AI joins the HR team: Artificial Intelligence may soon be assisting human resources departments, Inc. reports. Spoke, an AI startup, learns information about the deploying company and answers worker questions through a chatbot. Companies installing Spoke can program it with answers to the most-asked employee questions, but then the service can learn more about the company as time goes on. The Spoke software can also handle meeting room requests and equipment reservations, and it can prioritize IT requests.

The dark side of AI: Many AI experts are concerned about its malicious uses, including the sci-fi sounding scenarios of swarms of micro drones and autonomous weapons. Using AI to automate security tasks could also expand existing surveillance, persuasion, and deception threats, according to a new report, detailed on CNBC.com and in Motherboard.

Can SIM cards improve Continue reading

An Adaptive Approach to Bursting HPC to the Cloud

The HPC field hasn’t always had the closest of relationships with the cloud.

Concerns about the performance of the workloads on a hypervisor running in the cloud, the speed of the networking and capacity of storage, the security and privacy of the research data and results, and the investments of millions of dollars already made to build massive on-premises supercomputers and other systems can become issues when considering moving applications to the cloud.

However, HPC workloads also are getting more complex and compute-intensive, and demand from researchers for more compute time and power on those on-premises supercomputers is growing. Cloud …

An Adaptive Approach to Bursting HPC to the Cloud was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

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