Signup to preview the Microsoft Skype deep-learning based real-time audio language translator. Currently only Spanish and English translations are enabled, but more are promised. In a lovely test, Peterson School in Mexico City, and Stafford Elementary School in Tacoma, USA were asked to play a game of ‘Mystery Skype’ in which the children ask questions to determine the … [Read more...]
The Demise of Dr. Dobbs
Since the days when the 8080 was the desirable CPU, Dr. Dobbs has been publishing materials for programmers. That era ends with the close of 2014 as no new content will be added to the Dr. Dobbs website. Existing content will still be available, but in the fast moving world of technology it will soon become dated and left behind. Happily, the final Editor-In-Chief confirmed the … [Read more...]
Students Convert Sign Language to Text with 250 Lines of Code on an NVIDIA K1
Three Princeton students (Ethan Gordon ’17, David Liu ’17 and Jeffrey Han ’17) used an NVIDIA Jetson plus OpenCV – an open-source real-time computer vision library – to build a system able to interpret sign language letters from a video feed in 250 lines of code. The system response time was reported to be "snappy" as the GPU-accelerated edge detection and least-squares … [Read more...]
Comparing Managed Memory Between GPUs and Intel Xeon Phi
Managed memory greatly simplifies programming GPUs and Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors (when used in offload mode) because data can be utilized on either the host or the device without having to perform explicit device transfers. Instead the device(s) and host interact through the device driver to transparently migrate data as needed. As a result, application codes tend to be … [Read more...]
Successful Farber SC14 Tutorial “From ‘Hello World’ to ExaScale Computing Using x86, GPUs and Intel Xeon Phi Coprocessors”
The Rob Farber SC14 tutorial “From ‘Hello World’ to Exascale Using x86, GPUs and Intel Xeon Phi Coprocessors” (tut106s1) went smoothly and was highly successful. The requests we received from our students at the tutorial to teach this, or a similar class in the US and around the world from the UK to India are a clear measure of our success. In particular, ours is the only class … [Read more...]
Springer and Simula Join Forces to Provide Free eBooks on Computing
The folks at Scientific Computing let us know that Simula SpringerBriefs on Computing has introduced a new open access ebook series on the essentials of computing science that aims to provide introductions to select research in computing. The series presents both a state-of-the-art disciplinary overview and raises essential critical questions in the field. Published by … [Read more...]
Free Trial Of IBM Analytics
Sign up for a free beta test the IBM Watson Analytics, a natural language-based cognitive service that can provide access to IBM's predictive and visual analytic tools for businesses. This software automates tasks such as data preparation, predictive analysis, and visual storytelling for business professionals. Offered as a cloud-based freemium service, all business users can … [Read more...]
Automatically Caption Images With Neural Networks and Vector Space Math
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...]
Virtual Reality As A Web Service Goes Live
A number of companies are now experimenting with providing virtual reality via the web. The results are exciting and demonstrate the potential in this new technology for a host of applications from cinematic experiences to gaming and urban planning. MozVR by Mozilla is designed to be a “native VR” Web experience, made from the ground up for virtual reality. As one of the … [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...]