NSF Releases Report on Cloud Computing

CCC Blog (02/07/12) Erwin Gianchandani

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) recently released a report on the organization’s support for cloud computing, describing the research as a vital area of national importance that requires further research and development. The report highlights some of the 125 cloud computing research awards issued by NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate between 2009 and 2011, in fields such as architecture, algorithms, big data, security and privacy, and green computing. “The CISE directorate is currently considering future directions for cloud computing research under the working title Science and Engineering of Cloud Computing, [which] is intended to address the important questions of how to design correct and efficient future cloud systems, rather than how to utilize existing cloud systems,” the report says. The research is a collaboration between various technical areas, including computer systems, networks, security, computer architecture and software, and databases and data-intensive computing. “NSF anticipates that the CISE directorate will continue its support for cloud computing in future years, primarily driven by the [Computer & Network Systems] Division, with participation by … other directorates or offices as appropriate,” the report says.

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Researchers Claim 100-Fold Increase in Data Storage Speed

Network World (02/08/12) Tim Greene

Researchers at the universities of York and Nijmegen have developed a method for accelerating data storage hundredfold. The researchers say that if successfully translated to a storage product, the technology could theoretically cut the time to store a bit of data on a hard disk drive from a billionth of a second to a hundred-billionth of a second. For example, the method could decrease the time it takes to store a terabyte of data from about 22 minutes to about a minute and 20 seconds. The researchers developed the technology by heating a magnetic material with laser bursts that alter the magnetic spin of the material at the atomic level. The researchers note that current storage on hard drives changes spin using a fluctuating magnetic field, which is slower. Their method uses X-ray Magnetic Circular Dichrosim to examine thin films of an alloy of gadolinium iron and cobalt to study ultrafast spin reversal.

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U.S. to Use Climate to Help Cool Exascale Systems

Computerworld (02/08/12) Patrick Thibodeau

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Berkeley Lab has started building a computing center that will one day hold exascale systems. DOE recently gave Congress a report outlining a plan to deliver exascale computing by 2019-2020 and its expected cost. Berkeley’s Computational Research and Theory (CRT) facility will use outside air cooling, relying on the Bay Area’s cool temperatures to meet its needs about 95 percent of the time, says CRT’s Katherine Yelick. The evaporative cooling method involves hot water being transported into a tower where evaporation helps it cool. The 140,000-square-foot building, expected to be ready in 2014, will enable Berkeley Lab to combine offices that are split between two sites, and it will be large enough to house two supercomputers, including exascale-sized systems. The exascale system will be able to reach 1 quintillion floating point operations per second. The Berkeley facility “is very representative of what we have that’s best in the United States in research, in innovation,” says DOE secretary Steve Chu. He notes that computation will be “a key element in helping further the innovation and the industrial competitiveness of the United States.”

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