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News

• Unisys phasing out decades-old mainframe processor for x86 chips

  Unisys is phasing out its decades-old mainframe processor, which lags behind in speed and scalability compared to newer chips.

• Fujitsu 56 Gbps circuit doubles communication speeds between CPUs

  Fujitsu has developed a circuit that could double data rates between CPUs in servers and supercomputers

• HP enters supercomputing market with water-cooled Apollo system

  Hewlett-Packard has entered the market for supercomputers with a new Apollo family of systems, including a high-end machine that has a novel water-based system to keep it cool.

• D-Wave prepping quantum computers to outperform conventional servers

  D-Wave wants its quantum computer to surpass the performance of traditional computers in the coming years, and has a processor roadmap that could make that happen.

• Are we too stupid to let Watson make us smarter?

  IBM's supercomputer is ready to make the leap from analyzing massive data sets to actually helping us make the right decision. But will we be too proud to take Watson's advice?

• IBM launches business unit to make Watson a moneymaker

  IBM continues to commercialize its Watson-branded cognitive computing technology, setting up a new Watson business unit and unveiling two new Watson-derived services.

• D-Wave pitches quantum co-acceleration to supercomputing set

  Controversial quantum device maker D-Wave is hoping to find a home for its cutting-edge technology in the high-performance computing (HPC) market.

• Why the U.S. may lose the race to exascale

  In the global race to build the next generation of supercomputers -- exascale -- there is no guarantee the U.S. will finish first.

• SC13: GPUs would make terrific network monitors

  A network researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory has found a potential new use for graphics processing units -- capturing data about network traffic in real time.

• SC13: Top 500 shows growing inequality in supercomputing power

  Supercomputing power is being concentrated in a smaller number of machines, according to the latest Top 500 list of high-performance computers. Keepers of the list are uncertain how to parse that trend.

• Cray brings Hadoop to supercomputing

  Helping scientific supercomputing take advantage of emerging big-data technologies, high-performance computing manufacturer Cray is releasing a set of packages promising to optimize the process of running Hadoop on the company's XC30 machines.

• Intel rushes to exascale with redesigned supercomputing chip

  In the rush to exascale computing, Intel is making a small change that could have a big impact on system design with its upcoming Xeon Phi chip.

• China continues reign with top supercomputer

  China has maintained its lead in the twice-yearly ranking of the world's most powerful supercomputers, with the Chinese National University of Defense Technology's Tianhe-2 system bringing 33.86 petaflop/s (quadrillions of calculations per second) to the contest, almost twice the calculations offered by the runner up, the Titan Cray system run by the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

• Nvidia boosts supercomputing speed with Tesla K40 graphics chip

  Nvidia wants to help create some of the world's fastest computers with its latest Tesla K40 graphics chip, which is its fastest supercomputing co-processor to date.

• New supercomputer uses SSDs as alternative to DRAM, hard drives

  A new supercomputer being deployed this month in the U.S. is using solid-state drive storage as an alternative to DRAM and hard drives, which could help speed up internal data transfers.