Honeywell Traps, Zaps Ions for Science

Dan starts this episode with, as usual, an introduction of the cast. Henry reports that he’s only three weeks away from his epic move from Minnesota to Los Cruces, New Mexico.

Trapping Those Unruly Ions

We quickly move to our main topic:  Honeywell’s Trapped Ion Quantum computing initiative.  Shahin gives us a good overview of digital vs. analog and classical vs. quantum science (I recommend listeners white board out the quadrants he’s describing and their contents). The Honeywell system is in the ‘quantum-gate’ quadrant of Shahin’s model, suspending ions in space through magnetics and then hitting them with lasers to produce entanglement.

The Honeywell system is interesting because it is scoring well on the emerging Quantum Volume metric – showing very high fidelity for its qubit count. This system is the culmination of over 10 years of R&D and should be on the market later on this year.

Studying from Home

How does studying from home compare to working from home? Our second topic today is a dive into how universities are operating during the virus-related physical campus closings. Our own Jessi explains how her Purdue classes are now being conducted online with professors either video recording lectures or narrating slide decks. Some of her classes are truncated due to platform limits and tech problems. This is probably to be expected given the sudden move to online. There are practical considerations as well. Many students were on spring break when the lock downs went into place, so they don’t have their books or clothes with them. Jessi definitely does not think that online universities are the wave of the future. She strongly prefers the physical model where she can interact with students and professors. According to Jessi, nothing beats the physical model when it comes to higher ed.

Reasons Why No One Should Ever Be Online. Ever.

This week, Henry hips us to the fact that Chinese hackers may have been living in the guts of Linux since 2012. This is truly a chilling thought, as Linux runs a good portion of mission critical systems and almost all the cloud systems in the world. How big a threat is this? Listen to the pod to find out.

Catch of the Week

Jessi:  COBOL LIVES! The state of New Jersey is desperately looking for COBOL programmers to keep their creaky unemployment insurance system cranking along.

Henry:  hooked a big fish, but passed it over to Shahin who thinks it's pretty sublime.

Shahin:  landed Henry’s catch, which is a very rare film of the WW2 British code breakers hard at work at the legendary Bletchley Park site. Amazing stuff.

Dan:  a rare empty net week for Dano, sad, very sad.

Join us!

* Download the MP3 
* Sign up for the insideHPC Newsletter
* Follow us on Twitter
* Subscribe on Spotify 
* Subscribe on Google Play 
* Subscribe on iTunes 
* RSS Feed
* eMail us

SIHOGLIC: The Life & Times of Charles Babbage

RadioFreeHPC Studios Presents

Slightly Inaccurate History of Great Leaps in Computing (SIHOGLIC)

Edition One

In this groundbreaking production, RadioFreeHPC Studios reenacts dramatic moments in the life of computing genius Charles Babbage. We breath life into his early days, his many battles and his Babbage-worthy achievements.
We can honestly say, without hyperbole, that this is the finest podcast theater treatment of a computing pioneers’ life. Ever. Just read the reviews:

“We laughed until we stopped”  – Natural Science Online
“I could clearly hear voices and things…” – Fluid Dynamics Theater Reviews
“It wasn’t all that long...”  – LINPACK News & Reviews
"The acting!" – Play Reviews
“The acting was skillful, the writing brilliant, the overall production gets two big thumbs up!” – Pay & Play Re-Reviews

The Cast:

Shahin Khan:  Narrator
Dan Olds:  Babbage senior, Charles Babbage, Advertiser
Jessi Lanum:  Babbage mother, Disgruntled student, Advertiser, Town crier
"Special guest star":  Henry Newman, as Henry Newman
Written by Dan Olds, Jessi Lanum, with honorable mention to Shahin Khan and "special guest star" writer Henry Newman, who read it once.
Produced by Dan Olds
Special criticism by Shahin Khan

Join us for this groundbreaking podcast and revel in the rich texture that is Charles Babbage’s life story. Enjoy!

* Download the MP3 
* Sign up for the insideHPC Newsletter
* Follow us on Twitter
* Subscribe on Spotify 
* Subscribe on Google Play 
* Subscribe on iTunes 
* RSS Feed
* eMail us

AI in Science. When is it real?

We fire up the show with introductions and a little snippiness on Dan’s part. Henry reports that the weather in Minnesota is nearly human.

AI in Science

Jumping into our main topic, Shahin introduces an article from HPCwire interviewing Argonne’s Associate Laboratory Director Rick Stevens about how the DOE will be using AI in science. This is one of the biggest potential changes in our industry and well worth the investigation. But figuring out where AI fits into the traditional world of research and simulation is a difficult problem. Henry points out that nearly every grant proposal needs to include “AI” in order to get serious consideration.

We discuss Dan's Great HPC Road Trip* of national labs in 2018 and how nearly every lab is looking at using AI to inform their simulations and cut down on the brute force computing they’re doing now. Dan’s national lab interviews are here: Idaho National Lab, NCAR, NREL, Los Alamos, Sandia, NERSC, Lawrence Livermore

There’s also a slight tangent where Dan talks about driving hundreds of miles out of his way to mess with Henry’s Las Cruces lot and future home. This resulted in an epic short film “The Haunting of Henry House” which is stuck in bureaucratic  approval cycles according to Henry.

RFHPC Hall of Fame?

We also discuss the possibility of founding a Radio Free HPC Hall of Fame, but discarded it when we realized that no one would want to be in it.

COVID-19

As the conversation continues, Dan brings up an article that discusses how COVID-19 might affect processor foundry revenues and demand. We are, as a group, underwhelmed by the analysis. Henry notes that he has seen a significant increase in the price of laptops when shopping for a graduation gift for his nephew. Henry has reportedly seen an increase of around 20% in prices since February.

Reasons Why No One Should Ever Be Online. Ever.

Hackers have stolen and ransomed AMD’s GPU test files, a dastardly act, but not surprising to see. They’re looking for $100 million to give the files back, while AMD has downplayed their importance and value.

Catch of the Week

Henry:  Another empty net week for our pal Henry
Shahin: How is the internet coping with all of the extra traffic caused by Covid19 isolation?
Jessi:   For the first time in recorded history, Jessi’s net is empty….sad.

SuperCatch

Dan:  has a SuperCatch! He does a promo of the inaugural episode of a new RadioFreeHPC segment. Suffice to say that RadioFreeHPC Studios has a brand new production of “Charles Babbage, His Life & Times,” a gripping radio drama that will engage your emotions from A-B.

Listen in to hear the full conversation

* Download the MP3 
* Sign up for the insideHPC Newsletter
* Follow us on Twitter
* Subscribe on Spotify 
* Subscribe on Google Play 
* Subscribe on iTunes 
* RSS Feed
* eMail us

Supercomputers Battle Corona

The conversation today begins with discussing how long it will take until Henry moves into his rammed earth Los Cruces bunker. For those of you keeping track at home, the correct answer was 41 days at the time of taping, which, by the time the podcast is out will probably be "a couple of weeks ago".

We quickly move on to discussing the Corona Virus, which started sharing the headlines with its handiwork COVID-19. What else is anyone talking about these days, right? We discuss how the supercomputing community has joined the fight and the impact on the battle against the virus.
We do our best to keep the conversation light, knowing that everyone out there is suffering from the virus – it’s the one thing we all have in common these days. We hope you enjoy the episode.

Catch of the Week:

Henry:  Hackers target medical field during Covid19 crisis, one of the crappiest things we’ve heard in a long time.
Shahin:  Tells us about a great paper title, “Software Defined Microarchitecture An Arguably Terrible Idea, but Certainly not the Worst Idea” as found on InsideHPC.
Jessie:  Discusses how Globus is offering free access for anyone working on the Covid19 Virus. Great job, Globus, way to pitch in.
Dan:  Shares his latest addiction, the ancient Asian game of Go. Here is an intro to the game and some puzzles to work on, get crackin’.

Listen in to hear the full conversation

* Download the MP3 
* Sign up for the insideHPC Newsletter
* Follow us on Twitter
* Subscribe on Spotify 
* Subscribe on Google Play 
* Subscribe on iTunes 
* RSS Feed
* eMail us