Tag Archives: computing

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CERN brings supergrid internet to the world

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The CMS detector at CERN will process huge volumes of data every secondIn addition to searching for the ‘God’ particle that is the Higgs, CERN have been making a vast ‘supergrid’ to transfer the vast volumes of data created by the LHC supercollider every second to the universities studying it around the world (currently including myself). The sheer amount of data at the LHC – around 15 Petabytes a year – means a whole new system has been made to spread it to other institutions outside of the collider in Switzerland.

The grid still has some issues to work out but is showing signs of real potential to blow the current internet out of commission in a few years. The grid uses fibre-optic connections and high speed routers to transfer data. It could be as much as 10,000 times as fast as current broadband, allowing movie-sized files to transfer in seconds. Of course, this technology is currently only in use in the world of High Energy Particle Physics but, like the World Wide Web before it, what is invented at CERN tends to propagate out to the rest of us before too long.

[via The Times, image via CERN]

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More advances lead towards smaller, flexible computing

Flex those… silicon chips…A couple of neat new advances in computing this week. The first is an amazing flexible silicon chip designed by US researchers. The components of the chip are applied onto a thin layer of plastic, at first glued down to a substrate. When the circuit is completed, the glue is disolved and the plastic peels away a flexible chip. The researchers think that removing the traditional blocky form of a chip allows the bendable material to be used in many new applications such as brain implants or smart clothing.

“Silicon microelectronics has been a spectacularly successful technology that has touched virtually every part of our lives,” said Professor John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “In many cases you’d like to integrate electronics conformably in a variety of ways in the human body – but the human body does not have the shape of a silicon wafer.”

Meanwhile, Japanese scientists working on the developing technology of printing circuitry like an inkjet printer have developed a technique they believe is good enough to print TFT computer monitors. With all the components of a computer getting smaller and easier to manipulate, the days of the traditional shape of a desktop tower are surely numbered…

[ image and stories via BBC technology]

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Combining computing servers with alternative energy

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Could servers only be used when the wind blows nearbyThe Guardian has this interesting snippet of an article that makes sense to me on so many levels. Professor Andy Hopper of the University of Cambridge has been looking at the power usage of computers and made an astute suggestion: locate large processing servers near sources of alternative energy like solar or wind farms. When the power is flowing through the turbine or photovoltaic, computers all around the world can tap into the processors of the server farm. When there’s no wind or sun in one location, the network can call on the processors of somewhere there is.

This kind of synergy is fascinating and I think it’ll be a major feature in our future working lives. Flash drives getting bigger, faster and cheaper all the time and programs like Portable Firefox run straight off a portable drive. I’m writing this post on my portable usb, using only the processor and screen of the laptop I’m borrowing time on. Sooner or later all our computers will be a usb-style stick with all our programs, data and settings stored on it. Plug it into a nearby screen (or project your own), whack out your laser keyboard and dial into any heavy processing power from an external server. Who needs a big computer tower in your room when you can fit it in your pocket?

[story via the Guardian, image by Brent Danley]

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WiFi flu

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Haxx0r3d-router As if we don’t already have enough “regular” viruses to worry about, a research team from Indiana University suggests that a specially designed computer virus made to attack and propagate on unsecured WiFi routers could easily infect entire cities.

While the risk is apparently only theoretical at the moment, the potential for trouble is a function of the rapid uptake in wireless technology; there are enough open routers about nowadays that the theoretical bug could hop all across town unimpeded. [Image by kludgebox]

People tend to forget that routers are just little computers, but you can bet the malware industry is well aware of it. That said, I can’t really see the commercial potential of such a virus* – and if it can’t be used to make money, surely it would be a four-week proof-of-concept fad for script kiddies at worst?

[* The inevitable disclaimer here is that I’m not a computer security expert by any stretch of the imagination – if you can explain in more detail, please do so in the comments.]

[tags]WiFi, computing, virus, malware[/tags]
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Computing as commodity – an economic singularity approaching?

Asus Eee notebook computer Charlie Stross has been shopping – and he’s pretty impressed with the Asus Eee notebook he bought. Not because it’s particularly powerful (which by current standards it isn’t, really) but because he feels it represents a turning point in the commoditization of computer technology:

“The Eee isn’t an order of magnitude cheaper than a normal laptop but it is close to an order of magnitude cheaper than previous ultra-lightweight subnotebooks. And I think I’m going to use it as a pointer to a future trend in the computer business, at the low end. The Eee is about 8 times as powerful as that 1998 Omnibook, at a quarter the price. That’s an improvement of half an order of magnitude in one direction and close to a full order in the other. And it’s a tipping point, I think, showing that the price points that have defined the goal posts for the personal computer business aren’t set in stone.”

As Stross points out, client-side power is becoming less necessary as well as cheaper – at least outside of boutique markets like the one Apple has staked out for itself. And this is a good thing, surely? Well, it would seem so at first. But with the science fiction writer’s instinctive “what if?” chops, Stross looks beyond the immediate:

“… how deep will be the recession that follows once the personal computing industry deflates to its natural value (i.e. peanuts)?”

Ouch. Double-edged sword. [Image by UnwiredBen]

[tags]computing, technology, commodity, economics[/tags]