Issues

Browse our previous issues below, or browse and search for specific features or analysis & opinion.

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October/November 2010

August/September 2010

June/July 2010

Feature

A different approach to data

1 June 2010

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

Feature

The next generation

1 June 2010

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

Feature

Looking for the silver lining

1 June 2010

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

Feature

Multiple cores multiply programming

1 June 2010

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

Feature

Super seismic

1 June 2010

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

Feature

Only connect

1 June 2010

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

Feature

Informatics is just the tonic

1 June 2010

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

Feature

Turbulent times

1 June 2010

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

April/May 2010

Feature

The ins and outs of HPC

12 April 2010

Lee Ward, principal member of technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, tackles HPC-related IO improvements to multiple supercomputing projects

Feature

Unbounded clusters

12 April 2010

Especially with the advent of cloud computing, virtualisation and the increasing popularity of GPUs, what a physical computing system looks like is very fluid. Paul Schreier looks into how vendors of cluster management software address the provisioning and workload management needs
resulting from this major trend

Feature

Material values

12 April 2010

Felix Grant on the application of statistical packages to materials science

Feature

Finding the 'science' in GIS

12 April 2010

While popular services such as Google Earth and Bing Maps have made basic geographical information system functionality well-known, scientific investigations need considerably more power. Paul Schreier maps the highlights of the GIS product landscape

Feature

A booming banking sector

12 April 2010

Biobanks have their own unique requirements in terms of data management and, with increasing amounts of molecular data being generated around biobank samples, sophisticated informatics solutions are essential, as Greg Blackman finds out

February/March 2010

Feature

Living in a parallel world

17 February 2010

Cleve Moler, co-founder of The MathWorks, believes the benefits of parallel computing should be open to all scientists and engineers, regardless of their expertise as computer programmers

Feature

Towards exascale

17 February 2010

Arthur 'Buddy' Bland, project director for the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, describes the rise from terascale to petascale computing and the road to exascale

Feature

The GPU jump

17 February 2010

General-purpose graphical processing units (GPGPUs) have been making inroads into HPC applications, but with the release of chips optimised for scientific computations rather than just graphics processing, this branch is poised to make major market inroads. Paul Schreier examines what's behind this upcoming jump in performance, and its implications

Feature

Let's talk about the weather

17 February 2010

Stephen Mounsey discovers how high performance computing contributes to atmospheric science and improves the accuracy of weather forecasts

Feature

Food for a future

17 February 2010

Science and scientific computing can buy us time to cope with the demographic timebomb of population growth, says Felix Grant

Feature

All part of the service

17 February 2010

Contract laboratories must constantly adapt to meet the requirements of their clients and employ flexible data management solutions to do so, as Greg Blackman finds out

Feature

Software signals the way

17 February 2010

With wireless capabilities being built into an enormous variety of products and gadgets, the challenges facing antenna designers are greater than ever. Paul Schreier examines how modelling software has improved to aid them along every step of the development and implementation trail

December 2009/January 2010

Feature

HPC as a service

15 December 2009

Xi Zili is director of Shanghai Supercomputer Center, providing services for both science and industry

Feature

Driving change

15 December 2009

Stephen Mounsey examines some of the applications of HPC within the automotive industry

Feature

Facing the heat

15 December 2009

In the design of their servers, computer manufacturers are combating the need for power at every level: from processors, to power supplies, to cooling methods and everything in between. Paul Schreier checked with some major suppliers to investigate what they've been up to

Feature

Closing the CAD/CAE gap

15 December 2009

Vendors of analysis/CAE software are creating tight interfaces to CAD software; CAD firms are buying up CAE technology. Paul Schreier examines these trends and looks at what they mean to users and where they could take us

October/November 2009

Feature

Down by the sea

22 October 2009

Felix Grant fishes for data analysis applications among the mysteries of the deep

Feature

Fuelling the future

22 October 2009

Greg Blackman looks at how data management software is used in the petrochemical industry

Feature

HPC colonises the desktop

22 October 2009

Computers are continuing along their astounding path down the price/performance curve to the point where you can literally put the power of what we not long ago considered a supercomputer on or beside your desk in an office environment. Paul Schreier reviews some of these powerful systems

Feature

Aerospace modelling is taking off

22 October 2009

Aircraft are enormously sophisticated systems - and expensive, as well, so effective prototyping becomes a matter of survival. Paul Schreier investigates how CFD and other engineering software tools have become indispensable in optimising aircraft and for developing completely new concepts

August/September 2009

Feature

Molecular alchemy

27 August 2009

Saving untold hours in the laboratory, molecular modelling software allows researchers to determine how to make useful changes to existing substances or make new ones. Paul Schreier takes a glimpse of the tools and techniques researchers are using to find the molecules that will bring us improved drugs and materials

Feature

Making the connection

27 August 2009

HPC system architects are increasingly turning to alternative interconnects such as InfiniBand to replace Ethernet in many situations. Paul Schreier examines what is driving this trend

Feature

A taste for LIMS

27 August 2009

Greg Blackman looks at the role LIMS, as well as data management software as a whole, plays in putting food on our plates

Feature

Asking the big questions

27 August 2009

Stephen Mounsey finds out about the computing power behind some of the world's most ambitious scientific projects

June/July 2009

Feature

The future for HPC

11 June 2009

Hans Meuer, general chair of ISC'09, on emerging trends in high-performance computing

Feature

Computer - reconfigure yourself!

11 June 2009

Although they're not simple to program, field-programmable gate arrays can greatly accelerate frequently used functions, and you can reprogram them on the fly to tackle new tasks. Paul Schreier examines the impact they are starting to have on HPC

Feature

Far more than petaflops

11 June 2009

Thomas Lippert, director of the Jülich Supercomputing Centre at Forschungszentrum Jülich explains how supercomputers of highest scalability and scientific users can be brought closer together by means of a new support instrument: the simulation laboratory

Feature

Criminal patterns

11 June 2009

Felix Grant finds statistical processes applied to the social sciences, and in particular, to crime

Feature

Data pharming

11 June 2009

Greg Blackman looks at some of the current trends taking place in the pharmaceutical industry with regards to data management

Feature

Modelling rides into the future

11 June 2009

As auto manufacturers shift towards entirely new types of vehicles, they face a number of engineering challenges. Paul Schreier looks at how design/simulation software is helping them reach their goals more quickly and efficiently

Feature

Drilling for fuel

11 June 2009

HPC technology is aiding oil and gas companies locate hidden submarine reserves in a fraction of the time taken by previous methods, as Stephen Mounsey discovers

April/May 2009

Feature

Saving for the future

17 April 2009

Greg Blackman looks at some of the data-management challenges facing biobanks and how these repositories of material are being used to advance life-sciences research

Feature

The value of pre-validated LIMS

17 April 2009

Aaron M Jones, product manager for LIMS at Applied Biosystems, says the reality of COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) LIMS systems depends on the level of pre-validation offered by the vendor

Feature

Dedicated to science

17 April 2009

Dr Peter Beckman directs the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) in providing the computational science community with world-leading computing capability dedicated to breakthrough science and engineering

Feature

Crisis management?

17 April 2009

With the world of finance in meltdown, relying on HPC solutions to predict the future is vital, as Stephen Mounsey discovers

Feature

Beauty is skin deep

17 April 2009

Felix Grant assesses the value of data analysis software in the development and use of surface coatings

Feature

Athletes go to the max

17 April 2009

A variety of software is being used in the science of sports biomechanics to improve athletes' performance in safe ways. Paul Schreier looks at some interesting applications and the resulting improvements

Feature

Clusters have open-source roots

17 April 2009

When setting up and configuring an HPC cluster, there is a wide variety of choices when it comes to tools: proprietary software from hardware or software vendors, many open source tools, and open source tools with commercial support. Paul Schreier provides a quick overview of the major players and their offerings

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