Japan builds world’s most powerful supercomputer

A Japanese computer has taken first place on the Top 500 supercomputer list, ending China’s reign at the top after just six months. At 8.16 petaflops, the K computer is more powerful than the next five systems combined.

The K computer’s performance was measured using 68,544 SPARC64 VIIIfx CPUs each with eight cores, for a total of 548,352 cores, almost twice as many as any other system on the Top500 list. The computer is still under construction, and when it enters service in November 2012 will have more than 80,000 SPARC64 VIIIfx CPUs according to its manufacturer, Fujitsu.

Japan’s ascension to the top means that the Chinese Tianhe-1A supercomputer, which took the number 1 position in November last year, is now in second spot with its 2.57 petaflops. But China continues to grow the number of systems it has on the list, up from 42 to 62 systems. The change at the top also means that Jaguar, built for the US Department of Energy (DOE), is bumped down to third place.

The latest iteration of the bi-annual list was released Monday at the 2011 International Supercomputing Conference.

Unlike other recent supercomputers, the K computer doesn’t use graphics processors or other accelerators. It uses the most power, but is also one of the most energy efficient systems on the list, according to Top500.org. The supercomputer is installed at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS) in Kobe. When complete, it is intended to run at over 10 petaflops.

This is the first time Japan has had the most powerful supercomputer since the country’s Earth Simulator was surpassed by the DOE’s IBM BlueGene/L and by Nasa’s Columbia in November 2004.

For the first time, all of the top 10 systems achieved performance over 1 petaflop, although they are the only systems on the list that reach that level. The US has five systems in the top 10, Japan and China have two each and France has one.

The DOE’s Roadrunner, the first system to break the petaflop barrier in June 2008, is now in tenth place. The performance of computers on the list is measured using the Linpack benchmark, a set of routines that solve linear equations.

The last system on the new list was at position 262 six months ago, meaning almost 48 percent of the list has changed in the last six months, and the turnover rate has steadily increased during the last few lists, according to Top500.org which publishes the list. While performance at the top is advancing by leaps and bounds, movements lower down the list are more modest. The entry point for the top 100 increased to 88.92 teraflops from 75.76 teraflops six months ago.

IBM is the dominant manufacturer on the list with 213 systems in the Top 500, compared to HP with 153.

Intel continues to provide the processors for a majority of the systems on list, followed by AMD and IBM. Intel’s Westmere processors are now used by 178 systems, up from 56 systems 6 months ago.

The Top 500 list is compiled by Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee.

The Billabong Big Wave Flotation Wetsuit Is a Game Changer

 

Earlier this week Billabong unveiled an innovative survival wetsuit. Complete with a self-inflating bladder, it’s a pretty bold new step forward in surfwear. The idea is the brainchild of Shane Dorian — one of the best big wave surfer in the world — who almost drowned under a turbulent swell at the Maverick’s, a notorious cold-water break near San Francisco. Billabong’s new wetsuit works in a similar fashion to the airbags used backcountry skiing avalanche survival backpacks; a surfer in troubled waters pulls a ripcord, causing a flotation bladder in the suit to immediately inflate. The suit then acts as a life vest and quickly pulls the surfer to safety at the surface of the water. So… How did this fancy new device work for Dorian?

 

via a Billabong press release:

 

The most public demonstration of the Billabong V1 suit occurred on March 15 of this year when Dorian and a small group of top big wave surfers paddled into record-breaking waves at Jaws on the island of Maui in Hawaii. Formerly considered a spot so difficult to ride that a jet ski tow-in assist was necessary, Dorian caught an amazing 57-foot wave on that day, winning both the Monster Paddle and Monster Tube categories of the 2011 Billabong XXL Global Big Wave Awards. When Dorian pulled into the biggest tube of all time and failed to come out, he was pounded by the wave and driven deep underwater, where he deployed the Billabong V1 inflation mechanism. He rocketed to the surface and climbed back onto his surfboard, paddling off to the channel with a conspicuous hump on his back, clearly visible to the numerous photographers on hand.

Remote-Controlled Superhero [Video]

Just imagine, one evening, as you’re walking around your neighborhood, you see this thing zipping past you in the sky:

Mobile phones could be charged by the power of speech

For mobile phone users, a flat battery or a lost charger are among the frustrations of modern life.

Now new research promises a way to recharge phones using nothing but the power of the human voice.

Electrical engineers have developed a new technique for turning sound into electricity, allowing a mobile to be powered up while its user holds a conversation.

The technology would also be able to harness background noise and even music to charge a phone while it is not in use.

However, there could be a downside to the innovation, if it gives people a new reason to shout into their phones as they attempt to squeeze in every extra bit of power they can.

Plans for a 4,000mph underwater train from New York to London

“Vacuum Tube Train: A 4,000-mph magnetically levitated train could allow you to have lunch in Manhattan and still get to London in time for the theater, despite the 5-hour time difference. It’s not impossible: Norway has studied neutrally buoyant tunnels (concluding that they’re feasible, though expensive), and Shanghai is running maglev trains to its airport. But supersonic speeds require another critical step: eliminating the air—and therefore air friction—from the train’s path. A vacuum would also save the tunnel from the destructive effects of a sonic boom, which, unchecked, could potentially rip the tunnel apart.” “As envisioned by Frankel and Frank Davidson, a former MIT researcher and early member of the first formal English Channel Tunnel study group, sections of neutrally buoyant tunnel submerged 150 to 300 feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic, then anchored to the seafloor–thereby avoiding the high pressures of the deep ocean. Then air would be pumped out, creating a vacuum, and alternating magnetic pulses would propel a magnetically levitated train capable of speeds up to 4,000 mph across the pond in an hour. As Frankel and Davidson say, it’s doable. “We lay pipes and cables across the ocean every day,” says Frankel. “The Norwegians recently investigated submerged, floating tunnels for crossing their deep fjords, and were only held back by the costs.”

$25 Bare-Bones PC That Fits On Your Keychain

There are a number of barebones/mass-market low-cost devices out there, many of them aimed at the huge developing world market, hoping to outfit people with basic PC functionality for as little cost as possible. The OLPC is among the most famous, but perhaps the most luxurious: with a cutting-edge screen, built-in keyboard and networking, and so on, it has perhaps aimed too high, resulting in (as we’ve seen) increasing price and limited uptake. India’s “$35″ tablet comes to mind as well.

David Braben, perhaps best known for developing the revolutionary Elite, is now leading a foundation called Raspberry Pi to mass produce this ultra-minimal PC and distribute it where even an OLPC is too much. Their device is as bare-bones as it gets, and they’re hoping to sell it for $25.

It’s about the size of a USB drive, and comprises a 700MHz ARM11 processor, 128MB of RAM, and ports for video, removable media, and USB 2.0. That’s all! There’s a “general-purpose” I/O slot that can be used to attach peripherals like a camera or wireless module, but that’s really all there is to it. And of course, that’s pretty much all you need to run a modern computer OS.

With a 16GB SD card, a USB hub connecting a mouse and keyboard, and any monitor that connects to composite or HDMI, you’ve got a fully functional PC that probably outperforms desktops from a few years back. It’ll run what you put on it, as long as it’s ARM-compatible — right now it’s shown running Ubuntu 9, but there are a number of options, all offering complete modern web browsing, office tools, printing, maps, and all the other usual suspects.

I suspect this thing is much less junkware than many other low-cost devices, many of which are simply turning around cheap components for a low-margin product. This thing could be bought in bulk and easily distributed, powering internet cafes and schools in impoverished areas, and introducing them to the joys of Linux. Every kid could carry their entire computer around with them on an SD card. Doesn’t that sound right? Personally, I like it better than the OLPC approach, admirable as it is.

The Raspberry Pi team still has to prove it can produce the device for the price they’ve quoted — a task that has choked bigger operations than theirs. But despite being a custom device and PCB, it doesn’t seem unlikely that these off-the-shelf components (plus perhaps a shell) could be gotten for under that.

If you’d like to know more, head over to Raspberry Pi’s similarly bare-bones website, or check out this article at the BBC, where there is a video of Braben showing off the device and explaining his motivation for it.

Jet-Propelled Surfboard

Handy Man The bodies of WaveJet boards are designed by Steve Walden, an originator of the modern longboard. Jeff Harris

Surfers want to ride waves, not tire out while paddling to them. That’s where the WaveJet comes in. Two battery-powered jets tucked into the shortboard’s three-inch shell provide 20 pounds of thrust to propel riders at 12 mph—three times the average paddling speed.

Unlike a Jet Ski’s circular exhaust nozzles, the oblong ones on the WaveJet save space and add power. By forcing water through smaller, flatter openings, the jets produce a higher-pressure stream. Riders turn the jets on and off with a bracelet remote control that also acts as a kill switch if they wipe out. Because the battery-and-jet module sits just ahead of the fins, where a standing surfer’s weight rests, the 15 pounds it adds only minimally affects the board’s balance and performance.

Although the WaveJet’s power could realistically help pro surfers shred harder, its true purpose is to make water sports less frustrating for amateurs. The board’s propulsion system is currently built into 11 surfboard models, including paddle- and lifeguard boards, and will soon be installed in bodyboards, kayaks and kiteboards as well.

Dimensions: 7.1 ft. x 21 in. x 3.125 in.
Weight: 32 lbs.
Run Time: 39 min.
Price: $4,500 (est.)
More Info: WaveJet

E-fabric spools bring bullet-proof watches, paper-thin batteries

E-fabric, etched and layered with microscopic electronics, coud bring bullet-proof watches on every soldier’s wrist and a light in every African hut.

• 

John Maltabes, a Hewlett-Packard research engineer, is reflected in a sample sheet of thin, flexible electronic displays.

Tony Avelar/The Christian Science Monitor

Computer chips are arguably the most complex objects ever built by humans. Manufacturing a Pentium chip involves up to 5,000 steps of painting, etching, and polishing as up to 25 layers of metal and insulator are stacked onto a silicon wafer.

But John Maltabes, a visiting scholar at Hewlett-Packard (HP) Laboratories in Palo Alto, Calif., imagines a different future, one in which electronics are mass-produced like fabrics or newspapers.

Future Focus on Innovation: What’s new, cool, and changing the world

Imagine a yard-wide sheet of plastic coated in thin layers of metal and semiconductor rolling off a spool in a factory. That sheet passes under a printing press like a rolling pin, which imprints millions of transistors, capacitors, diodes, and wires onto it. The sheet then scrolls through an etcher to complete the printing process. The sheet would wind onto another spool as a finished product: perhaps a sheet of solar cells that could be unrolled and cut to size on a roof, or a flexible television display that could unwind like a blind in a living room.

Mr. Maltabes is working on these so-called “roll-to-roll” methods for making flexible, paper-thin computer displays. But he believes that the cheaper manufacturing and more flexible, durable products could fundamentally change the economic equation of what is affordable to do with electronics in general.

“There are devices that we can’t even imagine now,” says Maltabes. “You could ‘sensor’ the world. Think about wrapping the pipes in your house with some kind of material that actually senses the temperature of your pipes. They tell you the pipes are about to freeze and warm them so they don’t freeze.”

Or smart bandages that sense inflammation in a wound and release medications. Or lighted wallpaper, purchased by the roll at Home Depot, that changes color and hue with the turn of a knob.

One gadget being created with US military funds is the so-called Dick Tracy wristwatch: This flexible band, strapped on a soldier’s wrist, would provide communication, satellite images, and Google Earth-style maps. “You should be able to shoot a bullet through it and have everything work except for the place where there was a hole,” says Maltabes, of the device, under development at Arizona State University’s Flexible Display Center.

Roll-to-roll manufacturing could also lower the cost of making batteries. Yi Cui, a nanotechnologist at Stanford University, in California, is printing experimental batteries on paper and cloth using inks that contain carbon nanotubes and lithium-containing dust.

The technology potentially overcomes a major problem: Engineers would like to store electricity produced by solar and wind farms during the day, so it can be used at night – but the cost of today’s lithium batteries renders this out of reach.

“The scale of the problem does not match,” says Dr. Cui. “You put together all of the lithium batteries we’ve made for the last 20 years to power the US electrical grid and you can probably only power it for five to seven minutes.” Cui hopes, though, that printed batteries can be expanded to that massive scale.

Roll-to-roll could propel another green technology – printed solar cells – into widespread use in developing countries, enhancing the decentralized, off-grid economies that are already emerging. In areas without electricity, small propane or solar-powered generators are already used to recharge cellphones – or sometimes even small LED lights, says Sandeep Tiwari, a nanotechnologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., who devotes some of his time to developing-world technologies.

“Every hut has this light that is then used by children to study at night,” says Mr. Tiwari of one village in northern India. “Lighting has made a huge difference.”

Commercial Spaceport to Open in New Mexico

British millionaire and Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson is one step closer to his dream of providing commercial flights into space with the construction of a spaceport in Upham, New Mexico. What is certainly the product of the commercialization of the space industry, Spaceport America is destined to become the “flagship” of other spaceports throughout the world. In fact a similar spaceport project is already underway in Singapore.

Ticket pre-sales for the pricey space flights have already reached over $45 million dollars. Each ticket, costing approximately $200,000 will take you on a sub orbital flight on the VSS Enterprise. Boasting only 6 seats, it is sure to be an adventure to brag about.

The Taxpayer funded, $198 million spaceport will take tourists on short hops into space at first, but plans are already underway for more extended flights that Branson hopes will one day include orbit flights and stays in a space hotel.

Fortunately, the design allows for “green technology” by incorporating a core design implementing renewable energy. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, southern New Mexico has the second highest potential for solar power in the nation. The videos at the bottom of the page contain more information on some of the methods being incorporated into planning.

In addition, cooling methods such as buried air pipes will assist traditional methods. According to the Spaceport America site, ” By powering the nation’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport, Spaceport America, with clean, abundant solar energy, the world will look to New Mexico as the leader in implementing renewable energy solutions!”

This image from the October dedication ceremony shows the terminal under construction

Weekly flights are set to begin in approximately April, 2012. Also on the agenda for the new spaceport are several companies who will be specializing in research and in transporting payload to space.

According to Executive Director Steve Landeene of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority (NMSA), “The groundbreaking for Spaceport America is the beginning of a historic new chapter in New Mexico’s long legacy of space and cutting-edge technology. From the pioneering rocketry work of Robert J. Goddard in New Mexico in 1930, the beginnings of America’s space program in the 1940’s and 50’s to the ongoing NASA programs at White Sands Missile Range and now to Spaceport America, the Gateway to the Future.”

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE OFFICIAL SPACEPORT AMERICA SITE!!

Construction Images

This image shows the runway, along with the terminal (seen above the runway)

This is a cross section image of the foundation work and surfacing material being applied to the runway.

This video documents a test flight of the VSS Enterprise. As you will see in the video, the design allows for a traditional take off, with the actual suborbital capsule being released after gaining altitude. As you can see, the VSS Enterprise is designed for optimal lift from the enormous wings, thus optimizing fuel consumption. (Side thought: It would be great if they could outfit the top of the unit with solar panels….dare to dream)

Here is a great interview with Spaceport America Executive Director Steve Landeene. Except for the inane text chat scrolling at the bottom, it is a good interview.

1,000 Core CPU Achieved: Your Future Desktop Will Be a Supercomputer

Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Lowell laugh in the face of Intel’s weedy handful of cores in its new CPU lineup: They’ve just squeezed over a thousand processor cores onto a single chip.

We’ve heard a lot about the potential for future desktop-sized supercomputers, but more than anything else this research proves that in the not-too-distant future it’s likely to be a reality. Interestingly enough, there’s also a green angle to this idea: FPGA chips can be more power efficient than their competitors, and if less computer time is needed to process complex tasks, then the overall power consumption of computers using the tech could be impressively low.

The advance was made by Dr. Wim Vanderbauwhede’s team, who programmed an advanced chip called a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). FPGA systems have been around for a while, and their strength is that they can be programmed “in the field” to best suit whatever task they’re needed for, unlike the hard-coded silicon ship designs you’re probably imagining. The UM team’s innovation was in working out how to program the FPGA to act as mini processor cores, since the tech is typically difficult to work with. This has traditionally been a barrier to their use in desktop PCs, although small FPGAs are often found inside devices like LCD TVs.

Once the 1,000 individual CPU cores had been programmed onto the chip, the scientists took the necessary next step to prove how useful their innovation is: They ran an intensive algorithm through it to test how powerful it was, and they chose a tricky one too–at the core of motion MPEG video processing, used in many online video systems. The results speak for themselves. Using the kilo-core FPGA computer, the team was able to process 5 gigabytes per sec of movie files, which is about 20 times the rate that existing high-end computers can manage.