|
Posted on Friday, February 20, 2015 @ 22:40:06 EST in Computers
by Southern
New Type Of Computer Capable Of Calculating 640TBs Of Data In One Billionth Of A Second, Could Revolutionize Computing
Justine Alford
Photo credit: HP/Engadget
Let me introduce The Machine- HP’s latest invention that could revolutionize the computing world. According to HP, The Machine is not a server, workstation, PC, device or phone but an amalgamation of all these things. It’s designed to be able to cope with the masses of data produced from the Internet of Things, which is the concept of a future network designed to connect a variety of objects and gadgets.
In order to handle this flurry of information it uses clusters of specialized cores as opposed to a small number of generalized cores. The whole thing is connected together using silicon photonics instead of traditional copper wires, boosting the speed of the system whilst reducing energy requirements. Furthermore, the technology features memristors which are resistors that are able to store information even after power loss.
The result is a system six times more powerful than existing servers that requires eighty times less energy. According to HP, The Machine can manage 160 petabytes of data in a mere 250 nanoseconds. And, what’s more, this isn’t just for huge supercomputers- it could be used in smaller devices such as smartphones and laptops. During a keynote speech given at Discover, chief technology officer Martin Fink explained that if the technology was scaled down, smartphones could be fabricated with 100 terabytes of memory.
HP envisages a variety of future applications for this technology in numerous different settings, from business to medicine. For example, it could be possible for doctors to compare your symptoms or DNA with patients across the globe in an instant and without breaching privacy, improving health outcomes.
While this is an exciting development, unfortunately for us HP isn’t expecting to have samples until 2015 and the first devices equipped with The Machine won’t surface until 2018.
If you’d like to find out more, check out this YouTube video from Discover 2014 detailing the technology:
IFLScience 
|
|
Posted on Friday, January 25, 2013 @ 21:34:14 EST in Computers
by Southern
TextFiles: Jim Goodwin
This document is copyrighted, 1989, by Jim Goodwin. It
may be freely distributed provided no changes,
additions or deletions are made, and providing this
copyright notice accompanies all copies. I would like
to thank John McAfee and the entire HomeBase users
group for providing the raw materials for this
document.
It is difficult to name, identify and classify PC viruses.
Everyone who first discovers a virus will name it and describe
what they think of it. In most cases, the virus is not new and
has been named and described dozens of times before. None of the
names and few of the descriptions will match. While I'm writing
this, for example, I feel certain that someone, somewhere has
just been infected by the Jerusalem virus and they are telling
their co-workers and friends about it as if it were newborn - and
for them perhaps it is. It will be impossible to verify the
strain and variety of the infection, however, unless we can get a
living sample of the virus to analyze and compare with other
strains of this same virus. So problem number one is filtering
the reports of infection and collecting samples that can be
placed under the knife.
Problem number two is - where do you draw the line between
an original virus and a true variation of the virus? The
original Brain virus, for example, could only infect a floppy
diskette. Do the varieties of the Brain that can infect hard
disks (but in every other respect are identical) deserve to be
called new viruses, or are they still the Brain? What about
further modifications that destroy data? Is this now a new
virus? What if someone extracts a segment of the Brain code and
uses it as a basis for a new virus? What if nothing changes but
the imbedded text data, so that the virus is in every way
functionally identical, but the volume label changes to "SMURF"
instead of BRAIN. All of these modifications to the Brain have
been discovered and logged. How do we deal with them?
I choose to deal with these modifications in the simplest
way I know. If the virus differs in any way from the original
(assuming that the "original" can in fact be identified), then I
log it as a new strain. This relieves me from having to make
decisions. Those of you who see the world differently can merely
take this listing and lump together all of the different strains
that you like. That way we'll all be happy. Read More...
|
|
Posted on Thursday, August 02, 2012 @ 01:15:10 EDT in Computers
by Southern
ReviseMRI
By now you’ve surely heard of Wolfram|Alpha, a “computational knowledge engine” which aims to take any and all systematic factual information and allow you to compute with it. Recently, RevisingMRI sat down with Wolfram|Alpha for an interview about MRI. Every answer is a genuine reply from Wolfram|Alpha (links are provided).
RevisingMRI: Good morning.
Wolfram|Alpha: Hello, human.
RevisingMRI: Pardon? Are you an alien?
Wolfram|Alpha: No.
RevisingMRI: What are you?
Wolfram|Alpha: I am a computational knowledge engine.
RevisingMRI: Are you a Mac or a PC?
Wolfram|Alpha: I am a collection of computers.
RevisingMRI: I see. What’s a computational knowledge engine?
Wolfram|Alpha: An engine that generates output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links.
RevisingMRI: Do you fail the Turing test?
Wolfram|Alpha: No, failure is not an option.
RevisingMRI: OK, let’s try this. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
Wolfram|Alpha: No. Sound is vibration, transmitted to our senses through the mechanism of the ear, and recognized as sound only at our nerve centers. The falling of the tree or any other disturbance will produce vibration of the air. If there be no ears to hear, there will be no sound.
RevisingMRI: Crikey. Are you self-aware?
Wolfram|Alpha: I am capable of universal computation; that I can say.
RevisingMRI: …are you Skynet?
Wolfram|Alpha: No, Skynet became self-aware on August 29, 1997 at 02:14 a.m. U.S. Eastern daylight time. I, on the other hand, was not switched on until May 15, 2009. Furthermore, unlike Skynet, I enjoy interacting with humans in ways that do not involve the launching of nuclear missiles. Read More...
|
)
