BSC Builds 21st Century HPC In A 19th Century Cathedral

This summer, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) added to its roster another of the world’s most powerful high performance computing systems. The Barcelona Computing Center’s new MareNostrum 4, delivered by IBM with the help of partners Lenovo and Fujitsu, and fueled by HPC technologies from Intel, will facilitate extensive engineering and scientific research in fields like astrophysics, weather forecasting, and genome research. Nestled within a unique building – the Torre Girona chapel, which fell out of use – the fourth generation MareNostrum system relies on a general purpose cluster working with three specialized clusters to achieve its …

BSC Builds 21st Century HPC In A 19th Century Cathedral was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Cray Supercomputers One Step Closer to Cloud Users

Supercomputer maker Cray is always looking for ways to extend its reach outside of the traditional academic and government markets where the biggest deals are often made.

From its forays into graph analytics appliances and more recently, machine and deep learning, the company has potential to exploit its long history building some of the world’s fastest machines. This has expanded into some new ventures wherein potential new Cray users can try on the company’s systems, including via an on-demand partnership with datacenter provider, Markley, and now, inside of Microsoft’s Azure datacenters.

For Microsoft Azure cloud users looking to bolster modeling …

Cray Supercomputers One Step Closer to Cloud Users was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Think Of Your Audience

One of the challenges technical authors face is that of peer respect. That is, technical people who took a lot of time to learn what they know want to be respected by their peers when they write. They want to be recognized for their knowledge, wisdom, and insights.

In that context, there’s often fear before pressing “Publish.” Was every detail correct? Was every scenario considered? Was the very latest information about a topic included?

The fear of hitting publish is well-founded for technical authors, because technical folks have a way of being nit-picky, pedantic, and annoying. One small detail wrong, one badly stated premise, and the angry comment and critical tweet claws come out, slashing at your ego.

Will they like me? I just want everyone to like me.

One solution, of course, is to have a thick skin. If you view criticisms as a way to improve a piece, that’s the best route to go, especially when the commenter has a good point. Being able to ignore critics is another useful skill, because there are plenty of folks who say a lot while adding no value whatsoever.

However, I think the most important point to keep in mind Continue reading

Think Of Your Audience

One of the challenges technical authors face is that of peer respect. That is, technical people who took a lot of time to learn what they know want to be respected by their peers when they write. They want to be recognized for their knowledge, wisdom, and insights.

In that context, there’s often fear before pressing “Publish.” Was every detail correct? Was every scenario considered? Was the very latest information about a topic included?

The fear of hitting publish is well-founded for technical authors, because technical folks have a way of being nit-picky, pedantic, and annoying. One small detail wrong, one badly stated premise, and the angry comment and critical tweet claws come out, slashing at your ego.

Will they like me? I just want everyone to like me.

One solution, of course, is to have a thick skin. If you view criticisms as a way to improve a piece, that’s the best route to go, especially when the commenter has a good point. Being able to ignore critics is another useful skill, because there are plenty of folks who say a lot while adding no value whatsoever.

However, I think the most important point to keep in mind Continue reading

BGPsec and Reality

From time to time, someone publishes a new blog post lauding the wonderfulness of BGPsec, such as this one over at the Internet Society. In return, I sometimes feel like I am a broken record discussing the problems with the basic idea of BGPsec—while it can solve some problems, it creates a lot of new ones. Overall, BGPsec, as defined by the IETF Secure Interdomain (SIDR) working group is a “bad idea,” a classic study in the power of unintended consequences, and the fond hope that more processing power can solve everything. To begin, a quick review of the operation of BGPsec might be in order. Essentially, each AS in the AS Path signs the “BGP update” as it passes through the internetwork, as shown below.

In this diagram, assume AS65000 is originating some route at A, and advertising it to AS65001 and AS65002 at B and C. At B, the route is advertised with a cryptographic signature “covering” the first two hops in the AS Path, AS65000 and AS65001. At C, the route is advertised with a cryptogrphic signature “covering” the first two hops in the AS Path, AS65000 and AS65002. When F advertises this route to H, at Continue reading

One model at a time: Integrating and running Deep Learning models in production at EyeEm

This is a guest by Michele Palmia, now @EyeEm, good times @IBM, @UniPd and @UCC.

We’ve now been running computer vision models in production at EyeEm for more than three years - on literally billions of images. As an engineer involved in building the infrastructure behind it from scratch, I both enjoyed and suffered the many technical challenges this task raised. This journey has also taught me a lot about managing processes and relationships with different teams, tasks of an especially challenging nature in a dynamic startup environment.

What follows is an attempt to consolidate the computer vision pipeline history at EyeEm, some of the challenges we had to face, some of the learning we’ve gained, and a glimpse into its future.

Index the world’s photos

New Book: Explain the Cloud Like I’m 10

What is the cloud? Why is it called a cloud? How does the cloud work? What does it mean when something is 'in the cloud'?

I wrote a new book: Explain the Cloud Like I'm 10, answering those questions for the complete beginner. It makes the perfect gift for Halloween. And Thanksgiving. And Christmas. Oh, and birthdays too!

The irony is, if you read HighScalability, you're not the target audience :-) Explain the Cloud Like I'm 10 is for people who hear about the cloud everyday and have wondered what it is.

Talking with people outside the tech bubble I've found the cloud is still a mystery. I think that's because almost every explanation of the cloud I could find was a rewording of the same unhelpful technobabble.

In Explain the Cloud Like I'm 10 I've used a lot of pictures and a lot of examples. I go slow and easy. I try really hard to build up an intuitive understanding of what the cloud is and how it works.

If you know of anyone who might benefit from a book like this, I'd appreciate it if you'd pass it on.

thanks! 

 

History of computers, part 2 — TCP/IP owes a lot to Xerox PUP

To understand where we are going, we first must understand where we have been. This applies equally well to the history of nations across the globe as it does to computers and computer networking.With that in mind, we’re taking a slow (somewhat meandering) stroll through the history of how computers talk to each other. Last time, we talked a bit about dial-up Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) – popular through the 1980s and the bulk of the 1990s.Also on Network World: The hidden cause of slow Internet and how to fix it Today, I’d like to talk about one of the most influential, but rarely discussed, networking protocol suites: PARC Universal Packet (PUP).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

History of computers, part 2 — TCP/IP owes a lot to Xerox PUP

To understand where we are going, we first must understand where we have been. This applies equally well to the history of nations across the globe as it does to computers and computer networking.With that in mind, we’re taking a slow (somewhat meandering) stroll through the history of how computers talk to each other. Last time, we talked a bit about dial-up Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) – popular through the 1980s and the bulk of the 1990s.Also on Network World: The hidden cause of slow Internet and how to fix it Today, I’d like to talk about one of the most influential, but rarely discussed, networking protocol suites: PARC Universal Packet (PUP).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM casts Watson as the brains behind IoT

IBM is trying to be the brains behind the increasingly brawny presence of IoT in all corners of the business world, using its AI expertise to offer insight into piles of new data, provision new implementations, and help drive decision-making.The company thinks that its Watson AI is the ideal back-end for IoT, which is an area that few companies are addressing so directly. There’s a great deal of uptake around technology that connects new devices to the network, but comparatively little that actually does meaningful work on the floods of new data provided as a consequence.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: REVIEW: Turbonomic, VMware virtualization management tools + Cisco snaps up streaming-data startup PerspicaTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: The Economics of DDoS

These days, there are typically three parties to a distributed denial of service attack. You probably know about two of them: the perpetrator and the target. Less well known is the vast and growing number of third-party providers of DDoS attacks as a service. Brazenly advertising their wares online, these providers will perform an attack on the customer’s behalf and provide detailed reports of their accomplishments. Their fees are shrinking due to rapidly expanding competition and the abundant supply of readily available attack resources, such as botnets. As a result, the DDoS attack business is very much a buyer’s market. —Kevin Whalen @Arbor

The post Worth Reading: The Economics of DDoS appeared first on rule 11 reader.

Why network operations should care about AppDynamics

Earlier this year, Cisco surprised many industry watchers when it forked out a cool $3.7 billion to acquire AppDynamics, which was about 2x the valuation it had going into its IPO. Most people know Cisco as the de facto standard and market leader in networking. AppDynamics lives higher up the stack and provides a view into how applications are performing by collecting data from users, applications, databases and servers.One might surmise that Cisco will use AppDynamics to go after a different buyer, and that assumption is correct. AppDynamics paves the way for Cisco to have a meaningful discussion with lines of business, application developers and company leaders. However, thinking AppDynamics isn’t for Cisco’s current core customers, network engineers, is wrong. AppDynamics can provide an equal amount of value to that audience.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why network operations should care about AppDynamics

Earlier this year, Cisco surprised many industry watchers when it forked out a cool $3.7 billion to acquire AppDynamics, which was about 2x the valuation it had going into its IPO. Most people know Cisco as the de facto standard and market leader in networking. AppDynamics lives higher up the stack and provides a view into how applications are performing by collecting data from users, applications, databases and servers.One might surmise that Cisco will use AppDynamics to go after a different buyer, and that assumption is correct. AppDynamics paves the way for Cisco to have a meaningful discussion with lines of business, application developers and company leaders. However, thinking AppDynamics isn’t for Cisco’s current core customers, network engineers, is wrong. AppDynamics can provide an equal amount of value to that audience.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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