Definition: A supercomputer is the fastest computer in the world that can process a significant amount of data very quickly. The computing Performance of a "supercomputer" is measured very high as compared to a general purpose computer. The computing Performance of a supercomputer is measured in FLOPS (that is floating-point operations per second) instead of MIPS. The supercomputer consists of tens of thousands of processors which can perform billions and trillions of calculations per second, or you can say that supercomputers can deliver up to nearly a hundred quadrillions of FLOPS.

They have evolved from grid to cluster system of massively parallel computing. Cluster system computing means that machine uses multiple processors in one system instead of arrays of separate computers in a network.

These computers are most massive concerning size. A most powerful supercomputer can occupy few feet to hundreds of feet. The supercomputer price is very high, and they can vary from 2 lakh dollar to over 100 million dollars.

Supercomputers were introduced in the 1960s and developed by Seymour Cray with the Atlas at the University of Manchester. The Cray designed CDC 1604 which was the first supercomputer in the world, and it replaces vacuum tube with transistors.

The fastest supercomputer in the world was the Sunway TaihuLight, in the city of Wixu in China which is developed by Chinas National Research center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology (NRCPC), maintains its number 1 ranking for the first time, with a High-Performance Linpack(HPL) mark of 93.01 petaflops.

They can support more than a hundred users at a time.

These machines are capable of handling the massive amount of calculations that are beyond the human capabilities, i.e., the human is unable to solve such extensive calculations.

Many individuals can access supercomputers at the same time.

These are the most expensive computers that can ever be made.

They have more than 1 CPU (Central Processing Unit) which contains instructions so that it can interpret instructions and execute arithmetic and logical operations.

The supercomputer can support extremely high computation speed of CPUs.

They can operate on pairs of lists of numbers instead of pairs of numbers.

They were used initially in applications related to national security, nuclear weapon design, and cryptography. But nowadays they are also employed by the aerospace, automotive and petroleum industries.

Supercomputers are not used for everyday tasks because of their superiority.

Supercomputer handles those applications, which required the real-time processing. The uses are as follows:

They're used for scientific simulations and research such as weather forecasting, meteorology, nuclear energy research, physics, and chemistry, as well as for extremely complex animated graphics. They are also used to interpret new diseases and predict illness behavior and treatment.

The military uses supercomputers for testing new aircrafts, tanks, and weapons. They also use them to understand the effect on soldiers and wars. These machines are also used for encrypting the data.

Scientists use them to test the impact of nuclear weapon detonation.

Hollywood uses supercomputers for the creation of animations.

In entertainment, supercomputers are used for online gaming.

Supercomputers help in stabilizing the game performance when a lot of users are playing the game.

Besides raw speed, one big difference between a supercomputer and a mainframe is that a mainframe serves many people at once or runs several programs concurrently, whereas a supercomputer funnels its power into executing a few programs at high speeds. Mainframes are mostly used for large data storage and manipulation tasks, not for computationally-intensive tasks.

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What is supercomputer? - Definition

The report on the Global Supercomputer Market provides a panoramic view of the current developments and progresses within the Supercomputer market. The report further analyzes the impact of the novel COVID-19 pandemic on the Supercomputer market and provides an accurate insight into the current and future market fluctuations. Factors likely to influence the growth of the market, current trends, opportunities, restraining factors, and business landscape are discussed in-depth in the market study.

The Supercomputer market report further discusses the definitions, classifications, types, applications, market overview, manufacturing processes and costing, raw materials, among other key points. The report additionally provides SWOT analysis, investment feasibility, and investment return analysis.

Get a sample copy of the Supercomputer market report @ https://www.reportsanddata.com/sample-enquiry-form/2921

The major players profiled in the global Supercomputer market report include:

IBM Corporation, Cray Inc., Lenovo Inc., Sugon, Inspur, Dell EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Atos SE, FUJITSU, and Penguin Computing, among others.

Market Segment by Regions:

Type Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 2017-2027)Vector Processing MachinesTightly Connected Cluster ComputerCommodity Cluster

Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 2017-2027)Biology AreasMilitary and Defense MissionsWeather Forecasting and Climate PatternsScientific ResearchAdvance DatabaseOthers (Smog Control System, Simulated Environment in Automobile, Financial Market Place, Airline Industry)

End User Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion; 2017-2027)Commercial IndustriesGovernment EntitiesResearch Institutions

Request a discount on the report @ https://www.reportsanddata.com/discount-enquiry-form/2921

Key Questions Answered in the Report:

Key takeaways from the Supercomputer market report:

To read more about the Global Supercomputer Market @ https://www.reportsanddata.com/report-detail/supercomputer-market

Thank you for reading our report. For more information on customization, please reach out to us. Our team will ensure the report is tailored according to your needs.

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Impact of Covid-19 on Supercomputer Market Comprehensive Growth 2020-2027 with Top key vendor IBM Corporation, Cray Inc., Lenovo Inc., Sugon, Inspur -...

Andreas Rentz/Getty Images for Netflix

Andreas Rentz/Getty Images for Netflix(LONDON) While Superman himself,Henry Cavill, already proved his geek bonafides whenhe revealedthat he paints miniatures used in the role-playing gameWarhammer, his latest Instagram post further proved hes a pin-up for the nerd set.

Cavill justposted a video, set to the sexy sounds ofBarry Whites My First, My Last, My Everything, in which themuscled Witcher actor, clad in a tank top, builds a gaming computer from the ground up.

The techy thirst-trap video was too much for some fans to handle. Which gamer girl doesnt dream of a guy like you?one follower commented.

Glad we all agree that the video of Henry Cavill building a pc in a tank top is NSFW, another swooned.

Further evidence that Cavills a bonda fide gamer: inpast interviews, hes confirmed that he missed the call from directorZack Snyderto tell him hed won the part of Superman inMan of Steel, because he was playingWorld of Warcraft.

Excerpt from:

Super-computer Henry Cavill breaks the Internet again with more geek content - KSRO

In December 2017, Ms. Wright was named CNNs Hero of the Year for opening Bitty & Beaus. The award decision received online backlash from disability advocates, who said hiring underrepresented workers should not be viewed as heroic. They also said disabled workers should not be treated as inspirations for merely working a 9-to-5 job like nondisabled people do every day.

When you hire someone, unless they have a special story or something, you arent going to put them in a spotlight and parade them like a mascot, said Courtney Pugh, 23, of Dallas, who has Ullrich congenital muscular dystrophy and lives near Howdy Homemade, an ice-cream parlor that mainly employs people with disabilities. Youre going to hire them, youre going to treat them like the adult they are.

Ms. Wright said the award was more about recognizing the workers rather than herself, though she acknowledged that ideally, businesses like hers would not have to exist if people with disabilities were fully integrated into every workplace.

For right now, this seems to be a step in the right direction, and its making people rethink what the workplace looks like and what people with disabilities are capable of doing, she said

With devastating job losses because of the pandemic, advocates said this was the time for people with disabilities to be given the chance to pivot away from industries they had been traditionally boxed into and transfer their skills to other sectors.

Alexandra McConaughey, a multiply disabled law graduate, said the job market was so abysmal that it was understandable why disabled workers would choose to work at a company like SAP or Bitty & Beaus.

Im someone whos experienced a lot of hiring discrimination, so I see the appeal of knowing that the people on the other side are actually genuinely looking for disabled talent, said Ms. McConaughey, who was recently hired to work as an associate at a nonprofit law firm. Honestly, if I hadnt gotten this job, Id be looking for those types of initiatives right now, because getting a job as a person with a disability is so hard.

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How Equity Is Lost When Companies Hire Only Workers With Disabilities - The New York Times

How would a collision of some celestial object with Earth look like? Will ourplanet shatter into millions of pieces of space debris or be torn into larger objects.

It might be hard for some to imagine but certainly not for researchers and space geeks at Durham University who havenow used advanced 3D computer simulations toshow how Earth-like planets with thin atmospheres might have evolved in an early solar system depending on how they are impacted by other objects.

Astronomers in the Institute for Computational Cosmology, Durham University, conducted the simulations on the COSMA supercomputer and used the SWIFT open-source code, largely developed and maintained at Durham, to enable the running of these high-resolution supercomputer simulations.

The findings provide greater insight into what happens during these giant impacts, which scientists know are common and important events in the evolution of planets both in our solar system and beyond.Using 3D supercomputer simulations, the researchers have found a way of revealing how much atmosphere is lost during these events.

The researchersran more than 100 detailed simulations of different giant impacts, altering the speed and angle of the impact on each occasion. They found that grazing impacts like the one thought to have formed our Moon 4.5 billion years ago led to much less atmospheric loss than a direct hit.

READ |Does The South Atlantic Anomaly Suggest That Earth's Magnetic Poles Could Flip? Find Out

READ |Comet, Asteroid & Meteoroid Flying By Earth In 2020; Know How They Differ From Each Other

Head-on collisions and higher speeds led to much greater erosion, sometimes obliterating the atmosphere completely along with some of the mantle, the layer that sits under a planets crust.

Using the results, the study estimates thatEarth got lucky with its collision that created the Moon. The impact only managed to wipe out between 10% to 50% of its atmosphere.

"In spite of the remarkably diverse consequencesthat can come from different impact angles and speeds, we'vefound a simple way to predict how much atmosphere would be lost, said the lead author of the study, Dr. Jacob Kegerreis.

The studywill help scientiststo understand both the Earths history as a habitable planet and the evolution of exoplanets around other stars. The researchers are carrying out hundreds of more simulations to test the effects that the different masses and compositions of colliding objects might have.

READ |Asteroid 2002 BF25 Will Pass Very Close To Earth's Orbit On July 21: NASA

READ |NASA News: Asteroid The Size Of London Eye Will Soon Pass Very Close To Earth's Orbit

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Earth may have lost half of its atmosphere to create Moon, reveals study using 3D videos - Republic World - Republic World

The Shlorpians made an appearance on Day 2 of Comic-Con@Home to drop an exclusive clip and talk about taking on the haters in the sophomore season of Hulus most-watched animated series, which has already been greenlit for a third season ahead of the second season premiere.

Theres nothing we hate more than haters and we really bring to the haters the second season We take it to the haters pretty strong and also camp. We make fun of camp and haters, teased executive producer Mike McMahan, who was joined for the pre-recorded session by EP Josh Bycel and cast Justin Roiland, who is also an EP, Thomas Middleditch, Sean Giambrone, and Mary Mack.

Season 2 will also explore interesting class stuff when they discover that theres another group of people that are there, said said Bycel. Theyve never had to worry about class as aliens. We have a great episode where Terry is obsessed with dinner parties and Korvo is terrible at dinner parties and says all the wrong things.

Related Story'Star Trek: Lower Decks': CBS All Access Unveils Opening Scene Of New Animated Series - Comic-Con@Home

Comic-Con@Home: Deadlines Complete Coverage Of Virtual Confab

The show centers around a team of four aliens who escape their exploding home world only to crash land into a move-in ready home in suburban America. They are evenly split on whether Earth is awful or awesome. Korvo (Roiland) and Yumyulack (Giambrone) only see the pollution, crass consumerism, and human frailty while Terry (Middleditch) and Jesse (Mary Mack) love humans and all their TV, junk food and fun stuff. Their mission: protect the Pupa, a living super computer that will one day evolve into its true form, consume them and terraform the Earth.

McMahan and Roiland are some of the creatives behind hit animation series Rick and Morty so naturally, the question of a potential crossover was posed.

As everybody knows, the first thing you do when youre creating a new show is you start to think about all the crossovers you can do. Weve already written the Transformers cross, the Star Wars crossover, Muppet Baby crossover, the Captain Crunch crossover, McMahan remarked.

Comic-Con@Home: This Years Schedule Of Key TV & FilmPanels

We got to get these corporations on board to make nice with each other and lend the IP, said Roiland pointing out the challenge of bringing shows that are owned by competing companies together.

But that challenge doesnt stop the writers from coming up with a gameplan if a crossover were to happen.

I know what we would do if we did a Rick and Morty crossover. Itll be everybody sitting in a room and theyll be writing emails asking the Power Rangers to do a crossover with Star Trek the whole time,

Season 1 of Solar Opposites is currently available to stream on Hulu.

How To Watch This Years Comic-Con@Home Online

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Solar Opposites EPs Tease Whats To Come On Season 2 Of Hulu Animated Comedy Comic-Con@Home - Deadline

(LONDON) -- While Superman himself,Henry Cavill, already proved his geek bonafides whenhe revealedthat he paints miniatures used in the role-playing gameWarhammer, his latest Instagram post further proved he's a pin-up for the nerd set.

Cavill justposted a video, set to the sexy sounds ofBarry White's "My First, My Last, My Everything," in which themuscled Witcher actor, clad in a tank top, builds a gaming computer from the ground up.

The techy thirst-trap video was too much for some fans to handle. "Which gamer girl doesnt dream of a guy like you?"one follower commented.

"Glad we all agree that the video of Henry Cavill building a pc in a tank top is NSFW," another swooned.

Further evidence that Cavill's a bonda fide gamer: inpast interviews, he's confirmed that he missed the call from directorZack Snyderto tell him he'd won the part of Superman inMan of Steel, because he was playingWorld of Warcraft.

Read the original post:

"Super"-computer: Henry Cavill breaks the Internet again with more geek content - wcsjnews.com

The University of Florida (UF) wants to be a top-five public university, and it's turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to meet that goal. Back in May 2020, UF was the first higher education institution in the U.S. to receive NVIDIA's (NASDAQ:NVDA) newest DGX A100 data center computing unit. Just a few months later, the AI initiative is expanding in grand fashion via a $50 million gift and an additional $20 million invested by UF to help the university build the most powerful supercomputer system in the academic world.

UF's new $70 million system (which builds upon its existing HiPerGator supercomputer) should be up and running by early 2021 and will be able to handle 700 petaflops per second. A petaflop is how supercomputing power is measured, one petaflop equating to one quadrillion floating point operations per second. Simply put, this new NVIDIA-powered data center will be very powerful.

The NVIDIA DGX A100. Image source: NVIDIA.

AI is about more than just computer science. The discipline is being applied across many fields of study. Life sciences are using data to study ecology, find cures for disease, and study climate change. AI is transforming diverse industries like energy, healthcare, financial services, and entertainment.

But just as in the past, technology has the potential to grow inequality. Part of UF's endeavor is to empower educators at K-12 schools and other higher education institutions with its AI system. As for UF specifically, data science will be integrated across the whole campus, and AI study implemented into the curriculum for all disciplines. There is a growing belief that to stay relevant in the AI and technology race, there needs to be more investment in education. UF therefore wants to become known as the first AI university.

Besides hardware, AI demands a massive amount of data to work with and a software framework that governs how the hardware operates. While UF (and a fast-growing list of other organizations around the globe) bring the data, NVIDIA brings its software for developers and a curriculum of training to the table. The sum of the parts puts NVIDIA at the forefront of a massive AI movement that could become a trillion dollar-a-year industry in the next decade.

UF's investment is comparatively small but has a potentially massive payoff in just a few short years.

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NVIDIA and University of Florida Release New AI Curriculum Spanning All Educational Disciplines - Motley Fool

July 21, 2020 As neuroscientists work to better understand the complex inner workings of the brain, a focus of their efforts lies in reimagining and reinventing one of their most basic research tools: the microscope. Likewise, as astrophysicists and cosmologists strive to gain new insights into the universe and its origins, they are eager to observe farther, faster, and with increasing detail via enhancements to their primary instrument: the telescope.

In each case, to unravel scientific mysteries that are either too big or too small to see with a physical instrument alone, they must work in conjunction with yet another critical piece of equipment: the computer. This means more data and increasingly complex datasets, which in turn impacts how quickly scientists can sift through these datasets to find the most relevant clues about where their research should go next.

Fortunately, being able to do this sort of data collection and processing in near real time is becoming a reality for projects like theDark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument(DESI), a multi-facility collaboration led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory whose goal is to produce the largest 3D map of the universe ever created. Installed on the Mayall Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, DESI is bringing high-speed automation, high-performance computing, and high-speed networking to its five-year galaxy-mapping mission, capturing light from 35 million galaxies and 2.4 million quasars and transmitting that data to the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a U.S. Department of Energy user facility based at Berkeley Lab that serves as DESIs primary computing center.

We turn the raw data into useful data, said Stephen Bailey, a physicist at Berkeley Lab who is the technical lead and manager of the DESI data systems. The raw data coming off the telescope isnt the map, so we have to take that data, calibrate it, process it, and turn it into a 3D map that the scientists within the broader collaboration (some 600 worldwide) use for their analyses.

Over the last several years the DESI team has been using NERSC to build catalogues of the most interesting observational targets, modeling the shapes and colors of more than 1.6 billion individual galaxies detected in 4.3 million images collected bythree large-scale sky surveys. The resultingDESI Legacy Imaging Surveys, hosted at NERSC, have performed their catalogue generation at NERSC over the course of eight data releases. The DESI project also leverages the Cosmology Data Repository hosted at NERSC, which contains about 900TB of data, and NERSCs Community File System, scratch, and HPSS storage systems.

The previous big survey was a few million objects, but now we are going up to 35-50 million objects, Bailey said. Its a big step forward in the size of the map and the science you can do with.

But storage is only part of the services NERSC delivers for DESI. The supercomputing center has also been instrumental in developing and supporting DESIs data processing pipeline, which facilitates the transfer of data from the surveys to the computing center and to users. The project uses 10 dedicated nodes on the Cori supercomputer, enabling the pipeline to run throughout each night during a survey and ensure that the results are available to users by morning for same-day analysis, often helping to inform the next nights observation plan. The DESI team also uses hundreds of nodes for other processing and expects to scale to thousands of nodes as the dataset increases. To facilitate data I/O, DESI depends on the NERSC data transfer nodes, which are managed as part of a collaborative effort between ESnet and NERSC to enable high performance data movement over the high-bandwidth 100Gb ESnet wide-area network.

DESI is using the full NERSC ecosystem: computing services, storage, the real-time queue, and real-time data transfer, Bailey said. Its a real game changer for being able to keep up with the data.

Optimizing Python for CPUs and GPUs

While gearing up for the five-year DESI survey, which is expected to begin in late 2020, NERSC worked with the DESI team to identify the most computationally intensive parts of the data processing pipeline and implement changes to speed them up. Through the NERSC Exascale Science Applications Program (NESAP), Laurie Stephey, then a postdoctoral researcher and now a data analytics engineer at NERSC, began examining the code.

The pipeline is written almost exclusively in Python a specialty of Stepheys which enables domain scientists to write readable and maintainable scientific code in a relatively short amount of time. Stepheys goal was to improve the pipelines performance while satisfying the DESI teams requirement that the software remain in Python. The challenge, she explained, was in staying true to the original code while finding new and efficient ways to speed its performance.

It was my job to keep their code readable and maintainable and to speed it up on the Cori supercomputers KNL manycore architecture, Stephey said. In the end, we increased their processing throughput 5 to 7 times, which was a big accomplishment bigger than Id expected. This means that something that previously took up to 48 hours now happens overnight, thus enabling analysis during the day and feedback to the following nights observations, Bailey noted. It also saves the DESI project tens of millions of compute hours at NERSC annually.

New experiments funded by DOE approach NERSC for support all the time, said Rollin Thomas who runs NESAP for Data. And experiments that already use NERSC are capitalizing on our diverse capabilities to do new and exciting things with data. DESIs sustained engagement with NERSC, through NESAP for Data, the Superfacility initiative and so on, is a model for other experiments. What we learn from these engagements helps us serve the broader experimental and observational data science community better.

And the optimization effort isnt over yet. The next challenge is to make the DESI code compatible with the GPUs in NERSCs Perlmutter system, which is slated to arrive in late 2020. Bailey and Stephey began this process last year Stephen was instrumental in rewriting the algorithm in a GPU-friendly way, Stephey noted but in April NERSC hired one of its newest NESAP postdocs, Daniel Margala, to take over. As a graduate student, Margala had previously worked with Bailey on the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, a DESI predecessor project, so Im familiar with a lot of the data processing that needs to be done for DESI, he said.

So far, Margalas focus is on preparing DESIs code for GPUs so that it will be ready to leverage the full potential of the Perlmutter system. He is currently working with a small subset of DESI data on Coris GPU testbed nodes; the long-term goal is to make sure the software is ready to handle DESIs entire five-year dataset.

The astrophysicists and scientists on DESI are pretty comfortable using Python, so we are trying to do all of this in Python so that they will be able to understand the code we are writing and learn from it, contribute back to it, and maintain it going forward, Margala said.

Over the next few years, NERSC resources will also be critical to another, larger goal of the DESI project: reprocessing and updating the data.

Every year we are going to reprocess our data from the very beginning using the latest version of all of our code, and those will become our data assemblies that will then flow into the science papers for the collaboration, Bailey said. We only need 10 nodes at NERSC to keep up with the data in real time through the night, but if you want to go back and process 2, 3, 5 years of data, thats where being able to use hundreds or thousands of nodes will allow us to quickly catch up on all that processing.

Originally posted here:

Supercomputing Pipeline Aids DESI's Quest to Create 3D Map of the Universe - HPCwire

Andreas Rentz/Getty Images for Netflix

(LONDON) While Superman himself,Henry Cavill, already proved his geek bonafides whenhe revealedthat he paints miniatures used in the role-playing gameWarhammer, his latest Instagram post further proved hes a pin-up for the nerd set.

Cavill justposted a video, set to the sexy sounds ofBarry Whites My First, My Last, My Everything, in which themuscled Witcher actor, clad in a tank top, builds a gaming computer from the ground up.

The techy thirst-trap video was too much for some fans to handle. Which gamer girl doesnt dream of a guy like you?one follower commented.

Glad we all agree that the video of Henry Cavill building a pc in a tank top is NSFW, another swooned.

Further evidence that Cavills a bonda fide gamer: inpast interviews, hes confirmed that he missed the call from directorZack Snyderto tell him hed won the part of Superman inMan of Steel, because he was playingWorld of Warcraft.

Read the original here:

"Super"-computer Henry Cavill breaks the Internet again with more geek content - 1310kfka.com

It's an interesting time to be alive.

As recently as a couple decades ago, it would be hard to imagine what life looks like today a global pandemic, contentious and divisive politics, super-computer phones in our pocket, and constant access to unchecked information available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

As with any paradigm shift, the way we organize ourselves and our communities has a slight delay following the new habits and technologies we adopt.

After the automobile was created, we began designing our cities with roads suited for car travel, instead of walking. And after we created large industrial factories, we developed dense urban areas where there would be enough housing available for all of the workers at the factories to live nearby a story that resonates very much with the Downriver region.

We're now at a point where it's time to make substantial decisions at a local level about how Downriver will look for our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. And it starts with the McLouth Steel site in Trenton.

The Trenton Planning Commission is holding an online meeting via Zoom at 7 p.m. July 22 to vote on whether to recommend adopting a new zoning ordinance changing the current names, and some of the land use.

The former McLouth Steel property is currently zoned for mixed use, which allows for office buildings, hotels, restaurants, colleges and public waterfront access. This new plan wants to rezone the property for a new category labeled "industrial waterfront," which includes everything in the new I-1 category like railroad and truck transfer stations, and developments like outdoor shipping storage container yards and power plants.

As a member of the Trenton Zoning Board of Appeals for the past several years, it's required that applicants seeking a zoning change submit a site plan for our review, with the option to set conditional zoning. For instance, if someone wants to build a fence, we may require them to create an angled corner so they can see oncoming traffic.

The problem with a full-scale zoning structure change is that we're writing a blank check to an industrial developer with endless pockets to do whatever he wishes with some of the most important land for our Downriver region's waterfront economic development without even giving us any idea of what he'll do with it, whether it's to build the previously proposed intermodal shipping port or sell it to any other developer to do as they please.

If you and I need to submit a plan to the city in order to build a fence, or put on a hip roof instead of a gable roof, then it only makes sense to require a site plan to rezone one of the region's largest and most important developments in recent history especially considering the precedent this would set with the upcoming closures of the DTE plants in Trenton and River Rouge, and what may be done with those properties in the future.

I ask you to take the time to register and attend the Zoom meeting, which is open to the public, to voice your concerns that Trenton shouldn't write a blank check for rezoning 192 football fields worth of prime waterfront land without the submission of a site plan.

At the very least, we should be allowed to know what we're getting ourselves into when we give up the last bit of control we have left of our region's future.

You can use this link to access the proposed changes, zoning map and register for the meeting to give your public comments via Zoom at 7 p.m. July 22: bit.ly/3h53QUD.

If you're unable to attend, please submit a letter voicing your concerns to be read into the record to the Trenton Planning Commission by 5 p.m. July 20:

City of Trenton

Planning Commission

2800 Third St.

Trenton, Michigan 48183

Ryan Stewart is a member of the Trenton Zoning Board of Appeals and is running as a Democrat for the Wayne County Commission's 15th District.

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It's time to decide what we want Downriver's future to look like - Southgate News Herald

This article is brought to you thanks to the collaboration ofThe European Stingwith theWorld Economic Forum.

Author: Dario Gil, Director of IBM Research, IBM

In March, COVID-19 had hit Asia, Europe and the US, and the world was gripped by disbelief. The virus was far deadlier and spread much faster than any disease wed ever had to address in modern times. Fighting back against it, we were surprised once more as we developed new capabilities and new partnerships faster than ever before. Some of these initiatives could shape how global collaborations address risk in our post-COVID future.

We must apply what weve learned during the pandemic on a wider scale and establish a new international organization: the Science Readiness Reserves. It would assess risks and help prepare for future global emergencies from another deadly virus to a super vulcano eruption or a nuclear power plant disaster, and much more. This way once a disaster strikes, we wont be scratching our heads in panic; we will be ready to act and save lives.

What is the World Economic Forum doing about the coronavirus outbreak?

Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic requires global cooperation among governments, international organizations and the business community, which is at the centre of the World Economic Forums mission as the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.

Since its launch on 11 March, the Forums COVID Action Platform has brought together 1,667 stakeholders from 1,106 businesses and organizations to mitigate the risk and impact of the unprecedented global health emergency that is COVID-19.

The platform is created with the support of the World Health Organization and is open to all businesses and industry groups, as well as other stakeholders, aiming to integrate and inform joint action.

As an organization, the Forum has a track record of supporting efforts to contain epidemics. In 2017, at our Annual Meeting, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was launched bringing together experts from government, business, health, academia and civil society to accelerate the development of vaccines. CEPI is currently supporting the race to develop a vaccine against this strand of the coronavirus.

How a global consortium established quickly is fighting COVID-19

One successful current initiative is the COVID-19 High Performance Computing (HPC) Consortium. A U.S. organization with an international dimension, its offering some of the worlds most powerful computers, for free, to researchers trying to fight COVID-19. More than 60 teams of scientists are already relying on them, with new researchers joining weekly. The Consortiums members collaborate with the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE), an organization that unites supercomputing partners on the other side of the Atlantic. Researchers from both bodies regularly exchange data, ideas and results.

The history of Supercomputing at IBM

Image: IBM

Being a public-private partnership with government support, the Consortium solves key problems for researchers racing against time. To get results quickly, modern science often needs a computing boost to sift through thousands of potential designs of molecules when developing a new drug, or to simulate the spread of the virus in its second or third waves. Typically, to get computing power on a supercomputer, researchers submit a proposal and wait weeks or even months just for access. And it needs support of policymakers to zoom past any typical bureaucratic hurdles.

The COVID-19 HPC Consortium is providing exactly that. One team, led by Amanda Randles, a biomedical engineer at Duke University, has developed airflow simulations for a new device to split a ventilator between two or more patients. For its work, the team needed more than 500,000 compute hours; through the Consortium, they got matched with a specific supercomputer, and completed research that might have taken months in just six weeks. The scientists have just submitted their results to the FDA for approval.

Randles teams result is not the only success story of the Consortium. Researchers at British AI startup PostEra used a different supercomputer to build a crowdsourcing platform for scientists worldwide to submit drug designs. The team received more than 5,000 submissions and managed to process them within just a few days something they wouldnt have been able to do without the Consortium. Over the past two months, theyve narrowed the number of designs to around 200 and tested them in the lab. Theyve discovered that 21 molecules seem to be effective against the targets in the key protein within the coronavirus. Their next step will be to make sure the drug is fit for purpose before it can go into humans, the most important part of the drug discovery cycle.

How collaboration could aid in future crises

Impressively, it took less than a week to launch the Consortium and for all partners to agree on the ground rules. We quickly set up the proposal review and matching committees to approve and find the best supercomputing partner for each team. The Consortium is the proof that we know how to quickly mobilize the worlds talents to solve global problems. Im certain that it could be done again, on a much wider scale, and applied to future emergencies.

Together with the Chair of Harvard Astronomy department Avi Loeb, Ive recently voiced my thoughts on just that how to expand the idea of the Consortium to create a new body, the Science Readiness Reserves. This group, led by peer-nominated experts, would assess and respond to future global risks and emergencies. It would be run by scientists, experts in a variety of fields able to address the consequences of an asteroid impact, a mega drought, a powerful earthquake, a volcano eruption or another, even deadlier, disease.

We know how to quickly mobilize the worlds talents to solve global problems. Im certain that it could be done again, on a much wider scale, and applied to future emergencies.

Dario Gil

Such an organization could unlock technological capability. Critically, this body would ensure that scientists always have access to technologies they need (such as a supercomputer or perhaps soon even a quantum computer) otherwise difficult to obtain to deal with and prevent future emergencies. The aim would be to assess risks and put together a set of specific scientific capabilities that would be of value in the future, along with recommendations for the government, the health systems, emergency services, economists, other researchers, the media and the public.

Key to SRRs success would be matchups between the research team submitting a proposal and other scientists in academia or industry, or organizations in a specific field (say, the World Health Organization in the case of a pandemic). Such strategic partnerships between industry, academia and government could dramatically speed up research and development and be key for promoting creativity through the exchange of data and ideas.

Today, scientific talent, expertise, and resources are highly distributed across government agencies, academia and the private sector. Still, global and national bodies deal with specific fields again, take the WHO, or UN, or NASA and their core priority is not solely to assess future risks. And while many groups and movements advocate for wide dissemination of research and greater global collaboration, the SRR would specialize in ensuring that key technologies and expertise are made available to prevent global crises.

Such an organization does not currently exist despite the fact there is no shortage of global emergencies, from climate change to antibiotic resistance to epidemics and pandemics. It might be that before the Consortium, we didnt think industry rivals would be that keen to collaborate. Or it might be because we thought that having separate bodies each targeting a specific global threat is more efficient. Or because it is only recently that technology has matured to the point of anyone can access a supercomputer on the other side of the world through the cloud as if it were standing in their own lab. I think its all of the above but whats clear is that now we have all the ingredients to make it happen.

We need to act now. Policymakers must grasp the importance of such an organization, create the necessary regulatory frameworks and establish direct links with the future SRR experts. We must embrace the open-source approach to software and data sharing.

As we do, we must create the necessary defenses against cyberattacks and other criminals. COVID-19 brought shocking moments in research, including hackers extorting money from the University of California, San Francisco in exchange for COVID-19 research data. Such vulnerabilities are unacceptable. We have to make sure we have necessary protocols in place to protect the work of SRR experts on future known unknowns so that we can act on their recommendations and design new drugs or materials promptly and efficiently.

I know we can do it. The HPC Consortium is the case in point to prove it. The COVID-19 crisis has shown us all how unprepared we were to fight this global challenge. Thankfully, the crisis has also taught us we have the capability to make great strides once we pool our resources and talents. Realizations like that will boost our chances to survive this and other crises to come.

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The worlds supercomputers joined forces against COVID-19 why such collaborations are critical for tackling future emergencies - The European Sting

LUND, Sweden, July 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Alfa Laval - a world leader in heat transfer, centrifugal separation and fluid handling - has supplied its newly developed heat exchangers for the advanced cooling system of the world's fastest supercomputer; the Japanese `Fugaku'. Due to its speed of 415 quadrillion computations per second, the computer is used in research for remedies against COVID-19.

According to the Top500 list, compiled by researchers in the United States and Germany the most powerful computer is the Japanese supercomputer `Fugaku' at the RIKEN Center for Computational Science in Kobe. Developed by RIKEN and Fujitsu, it can carry out 415 quadrillion computations per second which is 2.8 times more calculations per second than the IBM system ranked second.

Beginning of July, a team of researchers from the Kyoto University and RIKEN announced that the supercomputer had been used for 10 days of molecule-level simulations to choose dozens of prospective COVID-19 remedies. The selected candidates included 12 drugs which are now undergoing clinical trials as possible remedies for COVID-19.

Achieving the speed and high performance of the supercomputer requires a highly efficient and stable cooling system, and for that purpose the customer chose Alfa Laval's recently developed T-series heat exchanger.

"I am very proud that our compact heat exchangers contributed to this important task" says Susanne Pahln klundh, President of the Energy Division. "In these challenging times of the pandemic, it is encouraging to see how innovation and technology enable faster solutions, for the benefit of our society."

Did you know thatthe new design of Alfa Laval plate heat exchangers installed in the `Fugaku' cooling system is used to cool many data centres around the world?

This is Alfa Laval

Alfa Laval is active in the areas of Energy, Marine, and Food & Water, offering its expertise, products, and service to a wide range of industries in some 100 countries. The company is committed to optimizing processes, creating responsible growth, and driving progress - always going the extra mile to support customers in achieving their business goals and sustainability targets.

Alfa Laval's innovative technologies are dedicated to purifying, refining, and reusing materials, promoting more responsible use of natural resources. They contribute to improved energy efficiency and heat recovery, better water treatment, and reduced emissions. Thereby, Alfa Laval is not only accelerating success for its customers, but also for people and the planet. Making the world better, every day. It's all about Advancing better.

Alfa Laval has 17,500 employees. Annual sales in 2019were SEK 46.5billion (approx. EUR 4.4billion). The company is listed on Nasdaq OMX.

http://www.alfalaval.com

For more information please contact:

Eva SchillerPR ManagerAlfa LavalTel: + 46 46 36 71 01Mobile: +46 709 38 71 01

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

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Alfa Laval Assists the World's Fastest Super-computer in the Fight Against COVID-19 - PRNewswire

Global Supercomputer Marketintroduced by Fior Markets analyzes the complete market statistics, historic performance, and finally offered market prospects for 2020 to2027time-period. The report sheds light on as latest trends, performance drivers, key players, revenue, growth rate and volume sales, and consumer insights. The report identifies the biggest opportunities in the globalSupercomputermarket as well as offers accurate latent demand forecasting on the market. It delivers all-inclusive analysis and insights into developments impacting businesses and detailed information of enterprises on the global and regional levels. The industry is segmented based on top companies, product types, end-users/applications, regional as well as country level.

NOTE: Our analysts monitoring the situation across the globe explains that the market will generate remunerative prospects for producers post COVID-19 crisis. The report aims to provide an additional illustration of the latest scenario, economic slowdown, and COVID-19 impact on the overall industry.

DOWNLOAD FREE SAMPLE REPORT:https://www.fiormarkets.com/report-detail/418092/request-sample

This report consists of drivers, challenges, and opportunities that help the market to grow over the analysis period. In addition, recent trends that support the growth of the market are highlighted. The study determines the financial outlooks of these companies, their research, and development statuses, and their expansion strategies for the coming years have been highlighted in the report. Readers of this report will get a clear perspective on the high demand and the unmet needs of consumers that will enhance the growth of the globalSupercomputermarket. The market dynamics, average price by type, leading consumers, and sales are studied.

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The report presents a comparative detailed analysis of all regional and player segments, presenting readers a better knowledge of where areas in which they can place their existing resources and boost their standing in the globalSupercomputermarket. The report states that the market has witnessed several important developments over the past few years, with mounting volumes of business data. For the future period, detailed forecasts on market value and volume are offered for each type and application.

Manufacturers are investing in capacity and regional expansions through strategic partnerships. Manufacturers are also investing in the production ofSupercomputer, to cover the deficit of demand and supply. Leading players in the market:NVIDIA Corp., Fujitsu Ltd., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., Lenovo Group Ltd., Dell Technologies Inc., International Business Machines Corp., Huawei Investment & Holding Co. Ltd., Dawning Information Industry Co. Ltd., NEC Technologies India Private Limited., Atos SE, and Cray Inc. among others.

The global version of this report with a geographical classification would cover regions:North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, South America, and the Middle East and Africa.

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Moreover, the report covers SWOT analysis, products, production, value, capacity, and other vital factors of the individual player. This section emphasizes the key studies, globalSupercomputermarket growth rate, competitive landscape, market drivers, trends, and issues. Market circumstances are described over the forecast period for product type, end-client application, and regional study from 2020 to2027.

Customization of the Report:This report can be customized to meet the clients requirements. Please connect with our sales team ([emailprotected]), who will ensure that you get a report that suits your needs.

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Global Supercomputer Market Research Report With COVID-19 Update, Analysis, Types, Applications, Forecast till 2027 - Cole of Duty

Andreas Rentz/Getty Images for Netflix(LONDON) While Superman himself,Henry Cavill, already proved his geek bonafides whenhe revealedthat he paints miniatures used in the role-playing gameWarhammer, his latest Instagram post further proved hes a pin-up for the nerd set.

Cavill justposted a video, set to the sexy sounds ofBarry Whites My First, My Last, My Everything, in which themuscled Witcher actor, clad in a tank top, builds a gaming computer from the ground up.

The techy thirst-trap video was too much for some fans to handle. Which gamer girl doesnt dream of a guy like you?one follower commented.

Glad we all agree that the video of Henry Cavill building a pc in a tank top is NSFW, another swooned.

Further evidence that Cavills a bonda fide gamer: inpast interviews, hes confirmed that he missed the call from directorZack Snyderto tell him hed won the part of Superman inMan of Steel, because he was playingWorld of Warcraft.

See the article here:

Super-computer Henry Cavill breaks the Internet again with more geek content - myCentralOregon.com

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. We at Insider Monkey have plowed through 821 13F filings that hedge funds and well-known value investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds' and investors' portfolio positions as of March 31st, a week after the market trough. We are almost done with the second quarter. Investors decided to bet on the economic recovery and a stock market rebound. S&P 500 Index returned almost 20% this quarter. In this article we look at how hedge funds traded Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI)and determine whether the smart money was really smart about this stock.

Is Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI) a bargain? The smart money was betting on the stock. The number of bullish hedge fund bets rose by 22 recently. Our calculations also showed that SMCI isn't among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks). Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

Hedge funds' reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn't keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research was able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 58 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that'll significantly underperform the market. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 and they lost 36% through May 18th. That's why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

David Brown Hawk Ridge Partners

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, on one site we found out that NBA champion Isiah Thomas is now the CEO ofthis cannabis company. The same site also talks about asnack manufacturerthats growing at 30% annually. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. Hedge fund sentiment towards Tesla reached its all time high at the end of 2019 and Tesla shares more than tripled this year. We are trying to identify other EV revolution winners, so if you have any good ideas send us an email.Keeping this in mind let's view the recent hedge fund action regarding Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI).

Heading into the second quarter of 2020, a total of 24 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 1100% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 2 hedge funds with a bullish position in SMCI a year ago. With the smart money's positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI) was held by Oaktree Capital Management, which reported holding $73.8 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Empyrean Capital Partners with a $71.7 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Madison Avenue Partners, Park West Asset Management, and Hawk Ridge Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Madison Avenue Partners allocated the biggest weight to Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI), around 22.4% of its 13F portfolio. Nokomis Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 9.28 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to SMCI.

Story continues

As industrywide interest jumped, some big names were breaking ground themselves. Empyrean Capital Partners, managed by Michael A. Price and Amos Meron, created the largest position in Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI). Empyrean Capital Partners had $71.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Eli Samaha's Madison Avenue Partners also made a $45.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Peter S. Park's Park West Asset Management, David Brown's Hawk Ridge Management, and Nathaniel August's Mangrove Partners.

Let's check out hedge fund activity in other stocks - not necessarily in the same industry as Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI) but similarly valued. These stocks are Allegheny Technologies Incorporated (NYSE:ATI), Acadia Realty Trust (NYSE:AKR), S & T Bancorp Inc (NASDAQ:STBA), and Amneal Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE:AMRX). All of these stocks' market caps match SMCI's market cap.

[table] Ticker, No of HFs with positions, Total Value of HF Positions (x1000), Change in HF Position ATI,26,94777,-1 AKR,14,31992,1 STBA,4,3076,-5 AMRX,7,4326,-3 Average,12.75,33543,-2 [/table]

View table hereif you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 12.75 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $34 million. That figure was $433 million in SMCI's case. Allegheny Technologies Incorporated (NYSE:ATI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand S & T Bancorp Inc (NASDAQ:STBA) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our calculations showed that top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks gained 12.3% in 2020 through June 30th but still beat the market by 15.5 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on SMCI as the stock returned 33.4% in Q2 and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

Get real-time email alerts: Follow Super Micro Computer Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI)

Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.

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Did Hedge Funds Make The Right Call On Super Micro Computer, Inc. (SMCI) ? - Yahoo Finance

The worlds fastest supercomputer will be built in the US by 2021, the US Department of Energy announced today.

The machine, dubbed Frontier, will be built by chip designer AMD and supercomputer manufacturer Cray for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Its expected to produce more than 1.5 exaflops of processing power, and will be used for a range of tasks, performing advanced calculations in areas like nuclear and climate research.

Frontiers record-breaking performance will ensure our countrys ability to lead the world in science that improves the lives and economic prosperity of all Americans and the entire world, said Secretary of Energy Rick Perry in a press statement. Frontier will accelerate innovation in AI by giving American researchers world-class data and computing resources to ensure the next great inventions are made in the United States.

When constructed, Frontier should be the most advanced example of whats known as exascale computing. This is the next-generation of computing capacity, in which processing power is measured in exaflops, or quintillions of calculations per second. A quintillion is a one with a whopping eighteen zeros behind it: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.

To give an idea of the scale of this sort of machine, AMD says Frontier will have as much processing power as the next 160 fastest supercomputers combined. Itll be able to handle an astonishing amount of data, with a bandwidth 24,000,000 times greater than the average home internet connection, capable of processing 100,000 HD movies in a second. Itll also have a correspondingly huge footprint, taking up 7,300 square feet of space (roughly equivalent to two basketball courts) and containing 90 miles of cabling.

Frontier isnt the only exascale computer the US is currently building either. Earlier this year, the Department of Energy announced a similar project: the supercomputer Aurora, which is being constructed by Intel and Cray at Argonne National Laboratory. Aurora will likely be the first exascale supercomputer in the US, but Frontier will have greater processing power.

These machines dont necessarily mean the US is the worlds greater computing power, though. China is expected to have its own exascale supercomputer up and running by 2020 a year ahead of America. China is also the worlds leader in terms of supercomputer volume, and is currently home to 227 of the worlds fastest computers (compared to just 109 operated by the US). Japan and the European Union are the other main contenders.

The news is a particularly big deal for AMD, says Patrick Moorhead, semiconductor analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. The contract is worth $600 million and Frontier will use scores of AMDs EPYC CPUs, each connected to four of the companys Radeon Instinct GPUs.

The world of supercomputer chips is mostly in the hands of Intel, and AMD hasnt supplied the processors for the worlds fastest supercomputer since 2012, when AMD Opteron CPUs were used to push ORNLs Titan computer to a benchmark of 17.59 petaflops per second.

Moorhead told The Verge that the Department of Energy likely chose AMD for a number of reasons, including the performance of its processors, and its recent successes designing semi-custom silicon for Microsoft and Sony. This bodes well for AMDs future as this is technology that should be in the mainstream market after 2021, said Moorhead.

Link:

Worlds fastest supercomputer will be built by AMD and ...

The White House's team recently added the world's fastest computer to its informal network of more than 40.

The worlds fastest supercomputer teamed up with the White Houses expanding supercomputing effort to fight the novelcoronavirus.

Japans Fugakuwhichsurpassedleading U.S. machines on the Top 500listof global supercomputers in late Junejoinedthe COVID-19 High Performance ComputingConsortium.

Jointlylaunchedby the Energy Department, Office of Science and Technology Policy and IBM in late March, the consortium currently facilitates more than 65 active researchprojectsand envelops a vast supercomputer-powered search for new findings pertaining to the novel coronavirus spread, how to effectively treat and mitigate it, and more. Dozens of national and internationalmembersare volunteering free compute time through the effort, providing at least 485 petaflops ofcapacityand steadily growing, to more rapidly generate new solutions againstCOVID-19.

What started as a simple concept has grown to span three continents with over 40 supercomputer providers, Dario Gil, director of IBM Research and consortium co-chair, toldNextgovlast week. In the face of a global pandemic like COVID-19, hopefully a once-in-a-lifetime event, the speed at which researchers can drive discovery is a critical factor in the search for a cure and it is essential that we combineforces.

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Gil and other members and researchers briefedNextgovon how the work is unfolding, how theyre measuring success and the research the consortium is increasinglyunderpinning.

The ConsortiumsEvolution

Energys Office of Science Director Chris Fall toldNextgovlast week that since the consortiumsfounding, its resources have been used to sort through billions of molecules to identify promising compounds that can be manufactured quickly and tested for potency to target the novel coronavirus, produce large data sets to study variations in patient responses, perform airflow simulations on a new device that will allow doctors to use one ventilator to support multiple patientsand more. The complex systems are powering calculations, simulations and results in a matter of days that several scientists have noted would take a matter of months on traditionalcomputers.

From a small conversation three months ago, we overcame a myriad of institutional and organizational boundaries to establish the consortium, Fall said, adding that the effort is building an international team of COVID-19 researchers that are sharing their best ideas, methods and results to understand the virus and its effects on humans which will [allow] the world to ultimately conquer or confine thevirus.

In a recent interview, Energys Undersecretary for Science Paul Dabbarexplainedthat any researcher interested in tapping into advanced computing capabilities can submit relevant research proposals to the consortium through an onlineportalthatll then be reviewed for selection. An executive committee supports the groups organization and helps steer policies, while a science committee is tasked with evaluating research proposals submitted to the consortium for potential impact upon selection. And a third committee allocates the time and cycles on the supercomputing machines once theyrechosen.

Whats really interesting about this from an organizational point of view is that its basically a volunteer organization, Dabbarnoted.

As of July 1, the consortium had received more than 148 COVID-19 research proposals with 78 approved and 68 up and running via the involved supercomputing resources, Energy confirmed. Though researchers are tapping into the assets free of charge, the work doesnt come without cost. Dabbar said the consortium taps into some of the departments user facilities and resources that were built and funded by taxpayer dollars. The effort induces operating costs such as runtime, electricity and cooling for the machines, which Dabbar said are relatively minor compared to actually building the capacity to beginwith.

It does absolutely cost money, Dabbar said. But at the end of the day, a lot of this is taking advantage of what the American people invested in, and using the flexibility, and shifting it towards thisproblem.

The combined, supercomputing resources are speeding up the chase for answers and solutions against COVID-19, but that faster pace isnt the only metric for success. IBMs Gil said in the early days, the establishment of the consortium and the efficiency we have achieved in expedited expert review of proposals and rapid matching of approved proposals to supercomputing systems, along with rapid on-boarding onto those systems would have to be considered our first majorsuccess.

Those involved also measure success by the number of up-and-running research projects, and highlighted that 27 projects already have experimental, clinical or policy transition plans in place. Insiders also consider the fact that they were able to quickly bring together industry players, as Gil noted many of whom are competitors, labs, federal agencies, universities and several international partners to share their systems to be a majorachievement.

NASA is one consortium member thats been involved in the initiative from the very beginning when it was invited by OSTP, Piyush Mehrotra, chief of NASAs Advanced Supercomputing, or NAS Division toldNextgovThursday.

The division, at Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, hosts the space agencys supercomputers, which Mehrotra noted are typically used for large-scale simulations supporting NASAs aerospace, earth science, space science and space exploration missions. But, a selection of the agencys supercomputing assets are also reserved for national priorities that transcend beyond the agencysscope.

In order to understand COVID-19, and to develop treatments and vaccines, extensive research is required in complex areas such as epidemiology and molecular modelingresearch that can be significantly accelerated by supercomputing resources, Mehrotra explained. We are therefore making the full reserve portion of NASA supercomputing resources available to researchers working on the COVID-19 response, along with providing our expertise and support to port and run their applications on NASAsystems.

Amazon Web Services is another that joined among the consortiums first wave of members and participated in the initial roundtable discussion at the White House where the concept emerged in March. The companys Vice President of Public Policy Shannon Kellogg toldNextgovin late May that, in joining, AWS saw a clear opportunity to bring the benefits of cloud to bear in the race for treatments and a vaccine. The company has since provided cloud computing resources to more than a dozen of the consortiums active projects, and according to Kellogg, provides in-kind credits to the research teams, which provide them with cloud computing resources. The tech-giants team then communicates regularly with the researchers to help address technicalquestions.

This effort has shown how collaboration and commitment from leaders across government, business, and academia can empower researchers and accelerate the pace of their work, Kelloggsaid.

Outside of IBM, NASA and AWS, other early members of the consortium include Google Cloud, Microsoft, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the National Science Foundation, as well as Argonne, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and Sandia National laboratories. And as the consortium progresses, its alsoexpandingalong the way. In April, the National Center for Atmospheric Researchs Wyoming Supercomputing Center, chipmaker AMD and graphics processing units-maker NVIDIA joined, amongothers.

Dell Technologies also began the process to participate in April, according to Janet Morss, senior consultant, high performance computing. It took about a month for the involvement to come into fruition and the company is now donating cycles from the Zenith supercomputer and otherresources.

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Inside the Volunteer Supercomputer Team That's Hunting for COVID Clues - Defense One

Samples of the COVID-19 inactivated vaccine were tested at a vaccine production plant (Sinopharm) in Beijing earlier Image Credit: AP

Abu Dhabi: On Thursday, Abu Dhabi announced the launch of the worlds first Phase III trials of an inactivated vaccine against the coronavirus. The trials will continue over the next few months, and are expected to enroll thousands of volunteers from across the country.

This is a new step in the UAEs fight against COVID-19. Having already registered the second highest COVID-19 testing rate in the world, and after reporting no deaths in 24 hours on Wednesday, there is cause for excitement, even as the number of COVID-19 cases around the world continues to rise.

Heres everything you need to know about the trials:

Who developed this vaccine?

The vaccine has been developed by Chinese pharmaceutical giant, Sinopharm China National Biotec Group (Sinopharm). The Chinese state-run firm is the worlds sixth largest vaccine manufacturer, and its vaccine is an inactivated vaccine.

What is an inactivated vaccine?

An inactivated vaccine uses a killed virus to trigger an immune response in the human body.

So in essence, administration of this vaccine means the killed novel coronavirus Sars-CoV-2 will be given to recipients. This, in turn, will induce the human body to produce antibodies to kill the virus in a process known as immune response.

Later, if a vaccinated individual comes into contact with a live virus, the body will know how to launch the same immune response to keep the individual safe.

This in contrast to vaccines that use:

-Live, weakened viruses (live-attenuated vaccines against measles, chickpenpox and yellow fever)

-Parts of the antigen (subunit, recombinant, polysaccharide or conjugant vaccines against Hepatitis B, HPV, pneumococcal disease and meningitis)

-Toxins produced by the antigen to cause the disease (toxoid vaccines against diphtheria and tetanus).

Is it dangerous to inject the same virus that causes the disease?

There are no known risks of using a killed virus or inactivated vaccine. The virus is grown in lab cultures under strict, top-level biosecurity standards, and then killed with heat, radiation or formaldehyde. This killing eliminates the virus ability to trigger the disease, in this case, COVID-19.

All of this is done under strict safety conditions so that even the bio-engineers and lab technicians do not contract the virus.

An inactivated vaccine [such as this] cannot cause the disease. Sinopharm, and indeed many other vaccine manufacturers have been producing vaccines in this manner for years, assured Dr Nawal Al Kaabi, UAE principal investigator, chief medical officer at Abu Dhabis Sheikh Khalifa Medical City (SKMC) and chairperson of the National COVID-19 Clinical Management Committee.

What other vaccines use killed viruses in them?

Currently, inactivated vaccines are used to protect against Hepatitis A, the flu via the flu shot, rabies and polio via the polio shot.

What are the stages of vaccine development?

Under international protocols, vaccine development goes through four different clinical stages. These happen after animal testing, and studies into the drugs ability to elicit an immune response. The first three stages are pre-marketing, and the final stage is conducted post-marketing.

In Phase I, safety and immunogenicity studies are performed on a small number of closely monitored subjects. Researchers look at safe dosage levels and side effects.

In Phase II, hundreds of human subjects receive the vaccine to determine its efficacy and safety in a wider group of people.

In Phase III, thousands of individuals are enrolled. The vaccines efficacy is studied, it is compared to other interventions in use, and adverse effects, if any, are noted so that the vaccine can be safely licensed.

In Phase IV, the administration and impact of the vaccine is studied in the general population, and reports of side effects after widespread use are collected.

How safe and effective is the Sinopharm vaccine?

Sinopharms vaccine has undergone Phase I and Phase II trials in China, and the company reported that the vaccine triggered a strong neutralising antibody response.

A total of 1,120 volunteers participated in PhaseI/II. They received two doses of the vaccine either 14, 21 or 28 days apart at low, medium or high dosing strengths, or a placebo. The company reported in June that all patients who received the medium-strength vaccine 28 days apart produced detectable levels of antibodies against the vaccine, known as seroconversion rate. Also, 97.6 per cent of those who received low or high doses 28 days apart produced detectable levels of antibodies.

No adverse effects were reported.

When did the Phase III trials begin in the UAE?

The trials were effectively kicked off on Wednesday, July 15 when Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed Al Hamed, chairman at Abu Dhabis healthcare regulator, the Department of Health (DoH), and Dr Jamal Al Kaabi, DoH acting undersecretary, were assessed and administered the vaccine at SKMC.

By taking the vaccines themselves, the senior officials demonstrated their confidence in the safety of the trials, and also the UAEs keenness to advance the fight against COVID-19.

Dr Jamal Al Kaabi also told Gulf News he was feeling fine after 24 hours, and that he had a great feeling about the trials.

Public recruitment for the trials is expected to start next week.

Who is running the trials?

Sinopharm has partnered with G42 Healthcare, a privately-held artificial intelligence and cloud computing firm based in Abu Dhabi.

Ashish Koshy, chief executive officer at G42 Healthcare, said the company is sponsoring the trials, with the medical portion, including medical assessment, vaccine administrations and follow-ups, to be run by Abu Dhabi public health provider, Abu Dhabi Health Services Company.

He said the company has set up a massive throughput laboratory to speed up the detection of the disease, which can process 15,000 to 20,000 samples a day.

We also have the 32nd fastest supercomputer, which can build models to accelerate the clinical trial, Koshy said.

In addition, G42 has manufactured essential PPE, conducted research into new vaccines and drug therapies, and used AI capabilities to map and predict trends in the outbreak and virus mutations.

How many people will be recruited for the Phase III trials?

UAE health authorities have issued a permit for 15,000 participants in the Phase III trials, with 5,000 in the first stages to be conducted in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain.

Who can participate in the trial?

People of all nationalities aged between 18 and 60 years, and living in the UAE, are eligible to participate in the trials, as long as they meet other inclusion criteria.

Dr Al Kaabi explained that there are strict inclusion and exclusion criteria, in accordance with international standards.

So anyone who is suffering from a severe disease like cancer, is immunocompromised, has received a recent live vaccine or blood products, or suffered from COVID-19, will be excluded, Dr Al Kaabi told Gulf News.

In the first stages, people will be recruited from Abu Dhabi and Al Ain alone.

Again, who cannot participate?

Quite a few groups of people cannot participate in the trials, in accordance with standards set by the WHO and the United States Food and Drug Administration.

-People who have contracted COVID-19 in the past or are suffering from it

-People suffering from severe diseases like cancer

-People who are immunocompromised

-People who have recently received a live vaccine or blood products

-People who are younger than 18 years, or older than 60 years

How can I participate in the trial?

Officials said a dedicated website will soon be launched to allow people to register. They can do so on 4humanity.ae. The dedicated website requires potential volunteers to submit their personal details and contact information. A special hotline has also been set up at 02 8191111 to respond to volunteer queries about the trials.

What happens after I register for the trials?

Participants will be asked to come down to one of five Seha facilities in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain, and will undergo a physical exam. Tests will be conducted to ensure that they are fit for the trials.

If approved, the volunteer will be administered a vaccine shot, akin to the flu shot. They will then be given a vaccine diary to record all signs and symptoms, and a healthcare team will follow up via in-person consultations and teleconsultations.

Three weeks later, a second shot of the vaccine will be administered.

Why are two vaccine shots required?

Dr Al Kaabi said that in the case of inactivated vaccines, more than one dose is required to trigger an immune response.

How long does the trial last?

For each individual, the trial will last 42 days.

The overall trial period in the UAE is expected to be between three to six months.

Who will ensure my safety during the trials?

Healthcare teams from Seha will follow up with trial volunteers during the trial itself, and on a monthly basis for a year after it concludes.

The trials also follow all international guidelines stipulated by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United States Food & Drug Authority (USFDA).

Why has the UAE been chosen for these Phase III trials?

The UAE was the preferred choice for the cooperation partnership to conduct the Phase III trials for the inactive vaccine as the nation is home to over 200 nationalities, allowing for robust research across multiple ethnicities and increasing its feasibility for global application on the success of the trials.

The study, if successful, will be approved and accredited by the Ethics Committee for Scientific Research in the wmirate of Abu Dhabi.

Authorities said the Sinopharm-G42 partnership will also allow UAE residents to gain quick access to a vaccine, if it proves safe and effective.

Who will produce the vaccine, if all goes well?

Dr Walid Abbas Zaher, group research director at G42 Healthcare, said the agreement with Sinopharm also allows for the vaccine, if it passes the third phase successfully, to be produced in Abu Dhabi.

The agreement allows for production in Abu Dhabi, and a production plan will be announced after the end of the trial, he said.

How can I be sure that my patient data will be safe?

All patient data will only be held by Seha healthcare facilities, and any information shared with external parties will be de-identified, as per international standards.

Koshy said entire process will be monitored by two clinical research organisations one local and other international.

When can this vaccine be ready for mass marketing?

G42 and Sinopharm are hoping to accelerate the development of a safe and effective vaccine that could enter the market by the end of 2020 or early 2021.

What do the officials say?

Our participation in this trial enables us to make a major contribution in the global fight to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a matter of national pride that we are able to help facilitate the trial process that could have a worldwide impact and help people around the world to benefit from research and if successful the manufacture of a vaccine to fight back against this disease, said Dr Nawal Al Kaabi, UAE principal investigator, chief medical officer at Abu Dhabis Sheikh Khalifa Medical City (SKMC) and chairperson of the National COVID-19 Clinical Management Committee.

I am really excited about this trial as a physician. I have always believed in the importance of developing a research ecosystem, and personally supported research initiatives. Fortunately, we received support from our leadership for these trials. It is the beginning of a historic moment, and God willing, we will have a great conclusion to these trial. I have a good feeling, said Dr Jamal Al Kaabi, acting undersecretary at the Abu Dhabi Department of Health and the second person to participate in the Phase III trials.

This partnership highlights the UAEs broad multifaceted approach to combating the virus, which includes innovative research into effective treatments, enhanced testing capabilities, and continuous cooperation with the international community. The UAE will spare no effort in contributing to solutions to the current pandemic, solutions that will aid humanitys ability to overcome the current pandemic, said Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed Al Hamed, chairman at the Abu Dhabi Department of Health and first person to participate in the Phase III trials.

Now more than ever, nations need to work in close partnership between the government and private sectors to create new initiatives, launch programs, develop policies, drive rigorous research, and develop capacity. It is for this reason that the United Arab Emirates welcomes all contributions by countries of the world, innovative entities and creative individuals who are committed to creating opportunities for joint collaboration towards confronting the threat of COVID-19 and defeating this global pandemic, said Abdul Rahman Mohammed Al Owais, UAE Minister of Health and Prevention.

The United Arab Emirates is a nation of innovation and tolerance, that is home to individuals from every part of the world and ethnic background. We will work closely with our partner to complete this clinical trials successfully, and make this vaccine available to the people in need worldwide. With the full support of local authorities, cutting-edge technologies provided by our partner G42 Healthcare, and high-quality services and supports from the medical and clinical entities, we will jointly contribute to the battle against COVID-19 worldwide, said Mr. Jingjin Zhu, president of biological products at Sinopharm Chinese National Biotec Group.

We are enormously proud that Sinopharm has partnered with G42 Healthcare in this groundbreaking phase III clinical trial in the UAE. Using our AI solutions, super-computer, advanced diagnostics solutions for COVID-19, G42 Healthcare is uniquely postured to conduct these trials. G42 Healthcare will be responsible for running clinical operations for this trial. We will be leveraging our groups technical and our own business capabilities to compute, correlate and provide fast and synthesised insights by deploying multiple AI models on the data generated during the trials to accelerate the much awaiting results. G42 Healthcare will be mobilising the logistical management of the trials taking in learnings from its proven capabilities in CRO management, clinical sites initiations and other E2E programme management activities, said Ashish Koshy, chief executive officer at G42 Healthcare.

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Phase III COVID-19 vaccine trials in the UAE: All you need to know about them - Gulf News

Researchers at the University of Regensburg in Germany are extending their exploration of the origins of the universe boosted by a new Fujitsu supercomputer, the PrimeHPC FX700 underpinned by the new Arm-based Fujitsu A64FX processor.

The universitys QPace4 (QCD Parallel Computing Engine 4) project can now reach new insights, using a supercomputer based on technology developed by Fujitsu for the supercomputer Fugaku, recently ranked number one in the TOP500 list of the worlds supercomputers.

The installation of QPace4 makes the University of Regensburg the first user in Europe to use Fujitsus PrimeHPC FX700 with A64FX processors (CPUs) the latest in a long series of supercomputer first-to-market milestones achieved by Fujitsu.

These CPUs are compliant with Arms Armv8.2-A SVE, the newest instruction set architecture for high-performance servers, and are particularly energy efficient.

Scientists at the University of Regensburg are leveraging the significant increase in compute capability for numerical simulations as part of its exploration of quantum chromodynamics (QCD).

This work aims to understand fundamental particles better, including the inner structure of the proton, and ultimately to determine the state of the universe immediately after the Big Bang.

The supercomputer will also be used by the University of Regensburg in the field of bioinformatics, with a focus on cancer research and immunology.

QPace4 is the fourth supercomputer in the framework of SFB/TRR-55, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). It utilises the same processor as the supercomputer Fugaku, which was jointly developed by Fujitsu with the world-renowned Riken Center for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan.

As well as superior performance per watt, the A64FX processor also incorporates Scalable Vector Extensions (SVEs). Developed for applications in high performance computing (HPC), this speeds up complex calculations by allowing the same mathematical operation to be carried out in parallel on large amounts of data.

In addition, the processor is coupled to an extremely fast main memory (high bandwidth memory, or HBM2), which for most applications is just as important as pure computing power, delivering a highly balanced ratio of computing power, memory bandwidth and network bandwidth, and avoiding performance bottlenecks.

A further important difference is that the Fujitsu systems computing power is not based on graphics cards. This makes it easier to program, especially in the case of massive parallelisation, which is essential for so-called grand challenge applications.

The deployment of a new supercomputer in Regensburg is the latest example of the Universitys partnership with Fujitsu, based on HPC and supercomputers in particular. In 2016 it took ownership, together with the University of Wuppertal, of the Fujitsu QPace3 supercomputer, installed at the Jlich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) near Cologne.

Professor Tilo Wettig, PhD, professor of physics at the University of Regensburg, says: Again Fujitsu has provided the University of Regensburg with the ultimate supercomputer to progress our work on fundamental physics and research into vital aspects of human health, such as cancer and immunology.

This partnership has proven highly successful over many years. We applaud Fujitsus commitment to maximizing compute power and minimising energy consumption, we have been particularly impressed with Fujitsus flexibility and responsiveness to us as a customer. The time taken to deliver, install, configure and deploy such advanced technology has been nothing short of outstanding.

Rupert Lehner, head of Central and Eastern Europe: Products Europe at Fujitsu, comments: Fujitsu not only has a distinguished track record developing the worlds fastest supercomputers, we also really understand our HPC customers specific needs around performance, applications and service. Our partnership with the University of Regensburg exemplifies that approach and we are proud to be helping the research team there take another step forward using Fujitsu technology.

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Fujitsu supercomputer will explore origins of the universe - IT-Online