This isn't really that new. There are folk who have been looking at characterising nano-scale variability for years, and there is a LOT more to it that just the fluctuations introduced by lithographic limits. Glasgow uni's device modelling group. What's odd is that these guys are estimating the fluctuations based on mathematical models when there is pretty good data available for the 65nm technology node already.
I haven't used it for a while, but I used to use Bruce Peren's efence for bits of malloc debugging, it hasn't been actively developed for ages but it's pretty light weight if that's what you need. There appears to be an up to date branch DUMA which I haven't tried. As far as I remember you can use efence under WIN and DUMA claims to work......
Unfortunately, what you prolly want is valgrind or purify.
I have had a pretty much similar experience with the U.S. network providers. Certainly in Europe the coverage is significantly better and the total cost of ownership of a phone seems a lot less than people are paying in the U.S.
But it's not that surprising really. I've alwasy understood that the economics of the mobile network (feel free to shoot me down here since I'm relaying and might have got this wrong) are essentially controlled by population density. There is a point beyond which it becomes uneconomic to develop a digital cell network due to the limited range of the transmitters (about 11 miles nominal range the last time I looked).
So it's not really surprising that the largest developments are in the developing countries and specifically Asia. There are large VERY densely populated urban centres which, until recently, had no cell coverage. So even selling call time at a low rate will mean that companies can recover their investment very quickly. So I would guess that the graph in the article will have to flatten out, or the emphasis will shift to different markets as the large urban areas in Asia and South America become saturated with providers in the same way as European cities are.
In Europe after the inital rapid development of the urban networks the coverage of rural areas was very slow. Scotland was a prefect example. Over half the population of the country lives in a 50 mile strip along the central belt of the country. Fine. Great coverage. Go up to the highlands....and until recently it was a very different story. The landscape and low population density made it a costly investment to cover these areas. You would have to expect that the same thing will happen in these new markets. Explosive development in e.g Mumbai followed by a much, much slower growth over the country as a whole. I'd love to see a distribution map of this stuff.
Anyway back to the original point. I've always understood that the reason why the service in the U.S. was rubbish was that, once the urban areas were well covered there was no real impetus to extend that to the gulfs between cities.
I'm with you on this one. I think this is total pants.
For a start: "In a superconductor all of the "particles" that carry charge around can exist in the exact same state, so when you look at a whole lot of these particles (many trillions) it can be just like looking at only one (which is "very quantum mechanical")."
My quantum mechanics is pretty rusty but I think the exclusion principle still holds at low temperatures. I which case, this is complete rot.
AC has a point about benchmarks but I would say it's debatable as to whether the XT3 doesn't qualify as a supercomputer.....
To quote a collegue of mine "The interconnect IS the machine!"
The primary difference between a supercomputer and a cluster is the degree of itegration between the computing elements. You can demand that a Supercomputer MUST have a crossbar switch or similar close coupled interconnection method but that only scales so far. For a good example have a look at the earth simulator, you're not telling me THAT is not a supercomputer ? The XT3 is similar in that it has a customised high bandwidth, low latency interconnect it just doesn't have the SMP elements that the earth simulator has.
As an aside Cray get a LOT of contracts that we never hear about . They are actually financially fairly healthy.
I would imagine that IBM probably did bid. They would be crazy not to for $52M.
But....... "the Hood system installed at NERSC will be among the world's fastest general-purpose systems".
Nersc are looking for general purpose computing systems to fill the needs of 2500 users. Blue gene is blindingly fast at some things, but general purpose it aint. I've benchmarked both the XT3 and Blue Gene with a set of general Scientific Codes and the opteron delivers much better general price/performance for a representative set of tasks. Blue gene will fly if you have the time to get REALLY low level in your optimisation but most scientists don't have the time or knowledge to start dealing with that ind of thing.
Clots usually require a solvent to brake them down http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platelets. There are chemical reactions which take place and don't tend to be easily reversible, otherwise nature would re-use platlets rather than re-absorbing them.
I currently work in academia but with a lot of very strong ties to industrial research labs, big ones ( TJ watson, Sony, Fujitsu, Intel ). The industrial guys still do a lot of very cool research, only some of which is directly targeted at immediateyl relevant problems. However, I think that the type of research that you are looking for really doesn't exist any more, nor am I sure that it ever did. The bell/Xerox/Skunkworks type of facilities of yore are surrounded by a lot of mythology. The truth is that think tanks were always expected to produce something, and frequently did since they hired some extremely smart people. Companies always expect a return on their investment.
For example, TJ watson labs do what IBM considers to be blue sky work i.e. there is not necessarily an immediate commercial benefit from the work. The groups compete for funding internally and they have a project peer review process which is very similar to what you will find in academia. There aren't really any places left where research is not targeted. The point is that the differences between academia and industry are quite small.
Over the last 20 years of so I would suggest that the idea of 'Blue Sky' research has changed a bit. 'Blue sky' as a term can be a little misleading since it suggests someone walking into the room and saying "Here is an unlimited pot of money. Go invent something REALLY cool!". I don't think this has ever happened. A research project is almost always restricted in that you work in a specific field (semiconductors in my case). The chances of me landing a job in say psychology are pretty slim unless I went back and did quite a lot of re-training. Researchers, since research is expensive, have to be experts in their field before you entrust large amounts of money to them and that is true in both academia AND industry. So pretty much everyone is going to require either: A LOT of experience (8-10 years plus) in the field, or a solid postgraduate training in a related field, before they consider you for a position. A PhD is a good way of racking up the experience points in a more compressed fashion than if you go straight into industry. You HAVE to specialise to some degree, unfortunately.
One thing I would say is that Academia offers a lot in terms of the lifestyle. I travel all over the world every year, meet some very nice people, have very good dinners and someone else pays for it. Also don't underestimate the benefits of the flexibility which you get in academia. I don't have to get up early in the morning and get much better holiday time than in industry!
Unfortunately the pay sucks:(.
As someone who works in bio-nano-tech it sounds like a great idea. With one obvious flaw......Drug companies! They will probably instantly knock the living bejesus out of anyone who actually publishes. They already use the academic community as hired monkeys, since the information only flows one way (and the profits). Once the trillioin dollar profits are on the line the gloves will be off.
Is there any theory around about how the aggregation of the Northern Ice cap occurred ? It seems that there must have been some kind of precipitation at some time, or at least free water in the atmosphere, to have transported all that moisture to the poles.
This would indicate ( at least to me ) that the surface temperature of mars was substatially higher at some point in the past. Ergo..Liquid water.
What are the Polar Ice caps on Mars made of if not water ? Carbon Dioxide ?
If so surely that's fairly conclusive proof that there is water on Mars which has to have been liquid or gas at some point.
Just call me a Self Assembled God:).
Good question tho'. The worrying bit is that whenever you put organisms into a competing environment one of them has to die. Either that or they have to coexist. Lets face it the human race doesn't have a great track record on that front.
Are we going to destroy any remaining life on Mars when we get there ? ( By the way I'd like to volunteer for the mission ) Or is it going to get us ?
Home court advantage vs. technology......
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't really that new. There are folk who have been looking at characterising nano-scale variability for years, and there is a LOT more to it that just the fluctuations introduced by lithographic limits. Glasgow uni's device modelling group. What's odd is that these guys are estimating the fluctuations based on mathematical models when there is pretty good data available for the 65nm technology node already.
I haven't used it for a while, but I used to use Bruce Peren's efence for bits of malloc debugging, it hasn't been actively developed for ages but it's pretty light weight if that's what you need. There appears to be an up to date branch DUMA which I haven't tried. As far as I remember you can use efence under WIN and DUMA claims to work......
Unfortunately, what you prolly want is valgrind or purify.
Not for me: 2006 UK Temperatures or for some time 1998 Temps
There may be a trend there.......
Unfortunately I couldn't find the wind speed data for this year but that seems to be significantly higher than usual.
But it's not that surprising really. I've alwasy understood that the economics of the mobile network (feel free to shoot me down here since I'm relaying and might have got this wrong) are essentially controlled by population density. There is a point beyond which it becomes uneconomic to develop a digital cell network due to the limited range of the transmitters (about 11 miles nominal range the last time I looked).
So it's not really surprising that the largest developments are in the developing countries and specifically Asia. There are large VERY densely populated urban centres which, until recently, had no cell coverage. So even selling call time at a low rate will mean that companies can recover their investment very quickly. So I would guess that the graph in the article will have to flatten out, or the emphasis will shift to different markets as the large urban areas in Asia and South America become saturated with providers in the same way as European cities are.
In Europe after the inital rapid development of the urban networks the coverage of rural areas was very slow. Scotland was a prefect example. Over half the population of the country lives in a 50 mile strip along the central belt of the country. Fine. Great coverage. Go up to the highlands....and until recently it was a very different story. The landscape and low population density made it a costly investment to cover these areas. You would have to expect that the same thing will happen in these new markets. Explosive development in e.g Mumbai followed by a much, much slower growth over the country as a whole. I'd love to see a distribution map of this stuff.
Anyway back to the original point. I've always understood that the reason why the service in the U.S. was rubbish was that, once the urban areas were well covered there was no real impetus to extend that to the gulfs between cities.
For a start: "In a superconductor all of the "particles" that carry charge around can exist in the exact same state, so when you look at a whole lot of these particles (many trillions) it can be just like looking at only one (which is "very quantum mechanical")."
My quantum mechanics is pretty rusty but I think the exclusion principle still holds at low temperatures. I which case, this is complete rot.
(Insert bad robot voice) 'It's not my fault."
To quote a collegue of mine "The interconnect IS the machine!"
The primary difference between a supercomputer and a cluster is the degree of itegration between the computing elements. You can demand that a Supercomputer MUST have a crossbar switch or similar close coupled interconnection method but that only scales so far. For a good example have a look at the earth simulator, you're not telling me THAT is not a supercomputer ? The XT3 is similar in that it has a customised high bandwidth, low latency interconnect it just doesn't have the SMP elements that the earth simulator has.
As an aside Cray get a LOT of contracts that we never hear about . They are actually financially fairly healthy.
I would imagine that IBM probably did bid. They would be crazy not to for $52M.
But....... "the Hood system installed at NERSC will be among the world's fastest general-purpose systems".
Nersc are looking for general purpose computing systems to fill the needs of 2500 users. Blue gene is blindingly fast at some things, but general purpose it aint. I've benchmarked both the XT3 and Blue Gene with a set of general Scientific Codes and the opteron delivers much better general price/performance for a representative set of tasks. Blue gene will fly if you have the time to get REALLY low level in your optimisation but most scientists don't have the time or knowledge to start dealing with that ind of thing.
Wow the first network card with built in Bat'leth!
Clots usually require a solvent to brake them down http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platelets. There are chemical reactions which take place and don't tend to be easily reversible, otherwise nature would re-use platlets rather than re-absorbing them.
Is it just me....or does php-internals sound painful ?
I currently work in academia but with a lot of very strong ties to industrial research labs, big ones ( TJ watson, Sony, Fujitsu, Intel ). The industrial guys still do a lot of very cool research, only some of which is directly targeted at immediateyl relevant problems. However, I think that the type of research that you are looking for really doesn't exist any more, nor am I sure that it ever did. The bell/Xerox/Skunkworks type of facilities of yore are surrounded by a lot of mythology. The truth is that think tanks were always expected to produce something, and frequently did since they hired some extremely smart people. Companies always expect a return on their investment.
For example, TJ watson labs do what IBM considers to be blue sky work i.e. there is not necessarily an immediate commercial benefit from the work. The groups compete for funding internally and they have a project peer review process which is very similar to what you will find in academia. There aren't really any places left where research is not targeted. The point is that the differences between academia and industry are quite small.
Over the last 20 years of so I would suggest that the idea of 'Blue Sky' research has changed a bit. 'Blue sky' as a term can be a little misleading since it suggests someone walking into the room and saying "Here is an unlimited pot of money. Go invent something REALLY cool!". I don't think this has ever happened. A research project is almost always restricted in that you work in a specific field (semiconductors in my case). The chances of me landing a job in say psychology are pretty slim unless I went back and did quite a lot of re-training. Researchers, since research is expensive, have to be experts in their field before you entrust large amounts of money to them and that is true in both academia AND industry. So pretty much everyone is going to require either: A LOT of experience (8-10 years plus) in the field, or a solid postgraduate training in a related field, before they consider you for a position. A PhD is a good way of racking up the experience points in a more compressed fashion than if you go straight into industry. You HAVE to specialise to some degree, unfortunately.
One thing I would say is that Academia offers a lot in terms of the lifestyle. I travel all over the world every year, meet some very nice people, have very good dinners and someone else pays for it. Also don't underestimate the benefits of the flexibility which you get in academia. I don't have to get up early in the morning and get much better holiday time than in industry! Unfortunately the pay sucks :(.
Does that mean that the steel plate in my head violates Australian health and safety standards ?
As someone who works in bio-nano-tech it sounds like a great idea. With one obvious flaw......Drug companies! They will probably instantly knock the living bejesus out of anyone who actually publishes. They already use the academic community as hired monkeys, since the information only flows one way (and the profits). Once the trillioin dollar profits are on the line the gloves will be off.
Nah ! That's two academic years! That translates to 200,001,22123.828299121 years for the rest of us.
I have a pencil and a bit of paper, and I was thinking about writing some music down.
Do I owe someone money ???
Not quite but I take your point.
It was first thing in the morning and I was feeling cynical.
Cheers for the info.
Is there any theory around about how the aggregation of the Northern Ice cap occurred ? It seems that there must have been some kind of precipitation at some time, or at least free water in the atmosphere, to have transported all that moisture to the poles.
This would indicate ( at least to me ) that the surface temperature of mars was substatially higher at some point in the past. Ergo..Liquid water.
What are the Polar Ice caps on Mars made of if not water ? Carbon Dioxide ? If so surely that's fairly conclusive proof that there is water on Mars which has to have been liquid or gas at some point.
Just call me a Self Assembled God :).
Good question tho'. The worrying bit is that whenever you put organisms into a competing environment one of them has to die. Either that or they have to coexist. Lets face it the human race doesn't have a great track record on that front.
Are we going to destroy any remaining life on Mars when we get there ? ( By the way I'd like to volunteer for the mission ) Or is it going to get us ?
Home court advantage vs. technology......