Paderborn University (Germany) has selected a Cray CS500 cluster accelerated by FPGAs as the first phase of its Noctua multi-petaflop supercomputer. The new supercomputer will be comprised of 272 compute nodes, connected by Intel’s 100 Gbps Omni-Path fabric. Each node will be equipped with two 20-core Xeon Gold (Skylake) processors, yielding a system core count …
Engineers have worked made drones the size of a bumblebee and loaded them with even tinier sensors and cameras. Almost every part of a drone has been made smaller, except for the brains of the entire operation — the computer chip. Standard computer chips for quadcoptors and other similarly sized drones process an enormous amount …
An amber specimen is now said to hold one of the best, most beautiful and most useful examples of dinosaur feathers. In recent decades, it’s become increasingly clear that modern-day birds are related to dinosaurs. And, while specimens of amber containing the remnants of feathered dinosaurs have been found before, an amber specimen described on …
Hyperloop One and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) are the two main companies working on Elon Musk’s vision of the Hyperloop. Both have set eyes on similar markets – the US, Emirates, Northern and Eastern Europe – to try and launch a first prototype of the innovation. Both are working on a magnetic levitation system that …
A synthetic genetic circuit programmed into an attenuated Salmonella enterica subspecies can be used to systemically deliver an anti-tumor toxin into mice with cancer. The circuit allows the bacterial cells inside a tumor to synchronously self-destruct by lysis, releasing the toxin directly in the tumor Researchers at the University of California San Diego and the …
China’s nuclear power installed capacity, including that in operation and under construction, is predicted to top 88 gigawatts by 2020, said Zhang Huazhu, head of the China Nuclear Energy Association (CNEA), a national industry organization. Nuclear power will play a bigger role in improving the country’s energy structure, coping with climate change and controlling air …
Carnival of Space 313 is up at Pam Hoffman’s Spacer blog. Air and Space magazine – Melted Moon by Dr. Paul Spudis discusses impact melts on the lunar surface The fresh lunar crater Giordano Bruno — a wealth of fascinating landforms to study Nextbigfuture – Several of the new NASA NIAC projects. Pions and Muons …
Wired – Volunteers from the Planethunters website have identified 15 new habitable planet candidates among data collected by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft. One of the 15, a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting the solar-type star KIC 12735740, has been officially confirmed as a planet (with 99.9 percent certainty). Named PH2 b, it is the second confirmed planet to …
HPCWire – Last year, John Kelly from IBM suggested that a byproduct of success in building an exaflop computer would be a petaflop in 1/3 of a rack. If we assume that DOE’s target of 20 megawatts (MW) power consumption for an exascale system is achieved and that 1/3 of a rack is about one …
The Carnival of Space 252 is up at Venus Transit. Centauri Dreams looks at the question of whether our civilization would be detectable from another star, assuming a level of technology not much higher than our own. The upcoming Square Kilometer Array may help make detecting other civilizations more likely, but will it be as …
