June/July 2010

DATA MANAGEMENT: GLOBAL PHARMA SOLUTIONS

Informatics is just the tonic

Greg Blackman looks at some of the trends taking place in the pharmaceutical industry and how data management software is being used

DATA ANALYSIS: SOCIAL NETWORKS

Only connect

Felix Grant looks at the application of data analysis software to social networks

HPC PROJECTS: OIL AND GAS

GPUs are established in both the visualisation and the processing of seismic data. Stephen Mounsey looks at how the technology is used, and at alternative hardware types available to geophysical analysts in the oil and gas industry

HPC PROJECTS: MULTICORE

Multiple cores multiply programming

The transition from applications written for sequential execution to those that can take advantage of multicore architectures has taken on enormous importance and brought with it some challenging problems. Paul Schreier examines some of the tools that are available to help programmers parallelise their code

HPC PROJECTS: CLOUD COMPUTING

Looking for the silver lining

If you believe the hype, then 'The Cloud' will be the next big thing across all strata of computing. Stephen Mounsey asks what it can bring to the HPC party

HPC DIRECTOR

The next generation

Dr Oz Parchment, IT infrastructure services manager, University of Southampton, describes his role and discusses the university's latest supercomputer, Iridis 3

MODELLING: AERODYNAMICS

Turbulent times

According to the legendary physicist Richard Feynman, turbulence is the last great unsolved problem of classical physics. Even so, computers allow us to study it in great detail, but you must apply such tools with great care. Paul Schreier tries to bring some order to the world of software intended for these studies of chaos

INSIDE VIEW

A different approach to data

Jill Matzke, senior manager of advanced platforms at SGI, says changing needs of scientists mean new methods of accessing data and memory are needed