computing
After more than a million years of computation by more than 4 million computers worldwide, the SETI@home screensaver that crunches data in search of intelligent signals from space has produced a list of candidate radio sources that deserve a second look. Three members of the SETI@home team will head to Puerto Rico this month to point the Arecibo radio telescope at up to 150 spots identified as the source of possible signals from intelligent civilizations. SETI@home is a computer program disguised as a screen saver that pops up when a computer is idle and analyzes radio telescope data in search of strong or unusual signals from space.
Fiber optic links between Los Angeles and Chicago have been "lit up" to form the cross-country network backbone for the National Science Foundation's $88 million TeraGrid project. Technicians are sending the first test data packets racing across the network, which boasts an unprecedented bandwidth--roughly 1 million times the speed of a typical dial-up Internet connection and four times faster than existing research networks. At 40 gigabits per second (Gb/s), the new "backplane," developed in partnership with Qwest Communications, will connect the resources of the TeraGrid, a multiyear effort to build and deploy the world's largest, fastest, distributed computing infrastructure for open scientific research.
A Pennsylvania researcher has developed a faster method for more efficient sharing of widely distributed Internet resources such as Web services, databases and high performance computers. Jonghun Park, assistant professor in Penn State's School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) who has proposed the protocol, says the new technology speeds up to 10 times faster the allocation of Internet resources. "In the near future, the demand for collaborative Internet applications will grow," Park says. "Better coordination will be required to meet that demand, and this protocol provides that."
Researchers have provided "proof of concept that quantum spin information can be locally manipulated using high-speed electrical circuits," according to an abstract of their paper being published on the "Science Express" website. The findings are significant because they demonstrate a solid-state quantum logic gate (i.e, control mechanism) that works with gating technologies in today's electronics, today's computers. This research also moves esoteric spin-based technologies of spintronics and quantum computing from the futuristic closer to within reach of present-day possibilities.
The energy required to create an accurate quantum computer may limit the ability of scientists to make these novel devices small, fast, cheap and efficient, says a University of Arkansas researcher. Quantum computing relies on using single atomic particles as units for information storage. Manipulating this information requires pulsed electromagnetic fields?which contain energy. The researcher found that the energy needed to perform a calculation is inversely proportional to the error rate: In other words, more energy means less uncertainty.
Researchers have demonstrated a new high-speed quantum cryptography method that uses the properties of light to encrypt information into a form of code that can only be cracked by violating the physical laws of nature. The method promises security even against information security's greatest foe: the not-yet-invented but still-feared powerful quantum computer, which could break almost any conventional code. The researchers transmitted encrypted data at the rate of 250 megabits per second. Because it uses standard lasers, detectors and other existing optical technology to transmit large bundles of photons, the protocol is more than 1,000 times faster than its main competitor, a technique based on single photons that is difficult and expensive to implement, the researchers say.
Intel-rival Advanced Micro Devices got a nice science win Monday when Sandia National Laboratory and Cray Inc. said they would build a supercomputer capable 40 trillion calculations per second using AMD's forthcoming Opteron processor. Ten thousand of them, to be precise. Total cost: $90 million. Sandia says it will use the computing heavyweight for "modeling and simulation of complex problems that were only recently thought impractical, if not impossible."
For the first time, a distributed computing experiment has produced significant results that have been published in a scientific journal. Writing in the online edition of Nature magazine, Stanford University scientists describe how they -- with the help of 30,000 personal computers -- successfully simulated part of the complex folding process that a typical protein molecule undergoes to achieve its unique, three-dimensional shape.
From Barney W. Greinke in Berkeley:
"When people point out the great technological accomplishments of the 20th century, they usually think it's the big things that are the most important ones. The atom bomb, jet airplanes, the Salk vaccine, electronic computing, DNA, men on the moon.
"How incredibly wrong they are.
PCs aren't known for being great friends of the environment. Chip making uses toxic chemicals, wastes water, and pollutes both water and air. Computers and components fill up landfills and add heavy doses of lead to the solid waste stream. NEC Solutions America says it's taking a step toward a more environmentally friendly computer with the PowerMate eco --- the first all-in-one, fanless ecological PC. The PowerMate eco has a 15-inch flat panel screen that contain none of the boron found in traditional CRT monitors and radiates less heat than its tubular counterparts; its motherboard is made with lead-free solder; it uses laptop components and has a "boxless" design; it has no fan; and it is made of a 100 percent recyclable plastic. The desktop is targeted at high density computing locations where noise, heat and desktop real estate are big concerns --- like call centers, hospitals, reception desks and financial trading rooms.
