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...]
Google Maps Adds Virtual Reality
Google has added virtual reality to Google Maps with the use of their cardboard smartphone app and holder. Total cost for those who have an android is either free (build a cardboard holder from the google plans) or up to $25 USD for a dodo cardboard case. View this video to see Google cardboard in action. http://youtu.be/lyscJbdBREE The Google Play store … [Read more...]
NVIDIA K80 1.8x Faster and “Highest Energy Efficiency to Date” for Financial Applications
STAC, the financial industry benchmarking organization, released performance testing results on the new NVIDIA Tesla K80 Dual-GPU Accelerator. In the STAC-A2 benchmark, which helps financial institutions and banks better manage risk, the NVIDIA Tesla K80 GPU set new performance records. The test code only used two threads on the host processor plus the K80 CUDA code was … [Read more...]
Turn Glasses or Sunglasses into Smart Glasses with Sony Device
Sony announced the development of an attachable Single-Lens Display Module that can turn eyewear of varying designs into smart devices. Mass production is expected to start this year. An SDK will be provided to partnering organizations for this Single-Lens Display Module that is claimed to offer "arithmetic processing capabilities on par with smartphones that was made … [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...]
Develop Apps for Windows, Android, ARM, and x86 with INDE
Try Intel's INDE (Intel® Integrated Native Developer Experience) for free or with a 30-day license to explore how to develop applications for Android and Microsoft Operating Systems running on ARM and x86. The full-blown version costs $700 with a $299 yearly support renewal contract. INDE features: Cross-OS, Cross-Architecture, Cross-IDE: C++/Java* tools and libraries … [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...]
Free eBook – Optimizing HPC Applications with Intel Cluster Tools
Amazon is offering a free Kindle edition of the book, “Optimizing HPC Applications with Intel Cluster Tools" by Alexander Supalov, Andrey Semin, Michael Klemm, and Christopher Dahnken. Table of Contents Foreword by Bronis de Supinski, CTO, Livermore Computing, LLNL Introduction Chapter 1: No Time to Read this Book? Chapter 2: Overview of Platform … [Read more...]
Intel Xeon Phi Used in Australia’s DUG Oil and Gas Supercomputer
Equivalent to the 8th largest system in the world, Perth Australia's DownUnder GeoSolutions (DUG) has purchased a large Intel Xeon Phi equipped supercomputer from SGI for Oil and Gas applications. This system augments TF/s capable workstations also equipped with Intel Xeon Phi devices. DownUnder notes that all their software has been rewritten to use coprocessors with 6x - 10x … [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...]