Imagine a magic algorithm that can create captions that accurately describe an image. The Google authors of, "Show and Tell: A Neural Image Caption Generator" claim to have created a machine-learning algorithm that approaches human-accuracy. If true, the value is clear as conventional text-based search methods can include relevant images as well as text. machine-translation … [Read more...]
MultiOS Gaming, Media, and OpenCL Using XenGT Virtual Machines On Shared Intel GPUs
At last, a full (opensource!) GPU virtualization solution that allows virtualized guest operating systems to "own" a shared Intel GPU yet allows applications to run with near-native performance! This means games, both DRM and free media, plus OpenCL applications can run in separate guest operating systems on a single Intel GPU system (convenient for users) or in a shared cloud … [Read more...]
Gary Grider Sees End Of Parallel File Systems Before He Reaches Retirement Age
HPC storage luminary Gary Grider, noted in his talk at the SC14 Seagate HPC User Group meeting, "The Future of Supercomputing" that he funded the development of the Lustre file-system (which can stream a data at a TB/s), and he believes it is possible we will see the end of such file-systems before he reaches retirement age. Instead, Gary sees object based storage similar to … [Read more...]
Seismic Changes in the Animation Industry
TechEnablement caught up with DreamWorks CTO Lincoln Wallen after his plenary invited talk at SC14. We had the opportunity to ask Lincoln about our observation of seismic changes happening within the animation industry as technology enables small and mid-sized businesses to create studio quality animated characters for television, augmented reality, and eventually for movies … [Read more...]
Inside The IBM NVIDIA Volta plus NVlink 2017 Delivery for $325M DOE Procurements
The U.S. Department of Energy unveiled plans to build two GPU-accelerated leadership class supercomputers (Summit at ORNL and Sierra at LLNL) in a combined $325M USD procurement to be installed in 2017 that will be based on next-generation IBM POWER servers incorporating NVIDIA® Volta GPU accelerators plus NVLink™ high-speed GPU interconnect technology. The announcement by U.S. … [Read more...]
Game Changers at SC14 – Obsidian and Landsvirkjun
TechEnablement has identified two game-changing "must watch" SC14 attendees: (1) Obsidian Strategics and (2) Iceland's Landsvirkjun National Power Company. In combination, these two organizations have the potential to convert the worlds hunger for HPC and the Internet from climate destroying coal to renewable energy. As Jeff Goodell observed, "coal was supposed to be the engine … [Read more...]
Microsoft Roomalive Creates Augmented Reality Room At Home
Ditch the AR goggles! In their paper, "RoomAlive: Magical Experiences Enabled by Scalable, Adaptive Projector-Camera Units" Microsoft researchers discuss a proof-of-concept prototype that transforms any room into an immersive, augmented entertainment experience. The basic building blocks are projector-depth camera units that create a unified model of the room with no … [Read more...]
Moving Brain Models Beyond Mother Nature For Robotic Navigation
In an attempt to create a super-navigation system, Queensland University of Technology research Dr.Michael Milford is combining human vision and rat spatial recognition computer models to solve the problem of place recognition far better than the solutions evolved by Mother Nature. Advances in computational technology coupled with the proliferation of autonomous … [Read more...]
Compare Augmented Reality Displays from NVIDIA, Oculus Rift, Meta, and Others (updated)
Augmented reality is poised to be the new computing display revolution - essentially the gold rush of the early 21st century. The key is the display. Following is information on various displays like Pinlight (110-degrees NVIDIA/UNC), Oculus Rift (110-degrees), Meta Space Glasses, Google Glass (& Navdy), plus the Brother AIRScouter and Lumus. One of the big issues is a … [Read more...]
Deep-Learning Challenge – Google Chose Nevada Self-Driving Car Test Route and Conditions
With the advent of deep-learning, open and impartial validation of complex learning and adaptive systems is becoming ever more important. For example drones and self-driving cars operate in true life-and-death situations where biases in a validation test can result in collisions with people, property, and other vehicles. In my Scientific Computing article, "Validation: … [Read more...]