Japanese Computer Is World's Fastest, as U.S. Falls Back
"A Japanese laboratory has built the world's fastest computer, a machine so powerful that it matches the raw processing power of the 20 fastest American computers combined and far outstrips the previous leader, an I.B.M.-built machine....
The accomplishment is also a vivid statement of contrasting scientific and technology priorities in the United States and Japan. The Japanese machine was built to analyze climate change, including global warming, as well as weather and earthquake patterns. By contrast, the United States has predominantly focused its efforts on building powerful computers for simulating weapons, while its efforts have lagged in scientific areas like climate modeling.
For some American computer scientists, the arrival of the Japanese supercomputer evokes the type of alarm raised by the Soviet Union's Sputnik satellite in 1957....
Assembled from 640 specialized nodes that are in turn composed of 5,104 processors made by NEC, the new Japanese supercomputer occupies the space of four tennis courts and has achieved a computing speed of 35.6 trillion mathematical operations a second. The processors are linked in a way that allows extremely efficient operation compared with the previously fastest "massively parallel" computers, which are based on standard parts rather than custom-made chips." [NY Times: Technology]
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The Shifted Librarian]
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Future Battle: Financial Services vs. Wireless Operators
"As the wheels of my plane touch down on the runway in Denver, my cell-phone announces my arrival, signaling a message to the valet parking attendant to retrieve my car and bring it kerb-side. As I walk through the terminal, I find a Coke machine and point my phone at it. Typing in the number of the vending machine, I order a Coke, the price of which is added to my monthly statement. About that time, a slew of additional messages are also triggered, notifying my online calendar to place me back in Denver, and sending a text message to my wife that I've landed safely....
As I approach my car, my cell phone and the car agree to unlock the doors and allow me entry, recognizing who I am, it sets my seat and radio station for me, along with my desired temperature.
On the way home, I take the express lane through the toll booths; again, itís my cell phone that allows me to pass through the fast lanes without stopping to drop $.50 in the receptacle.
The concept that my cell phone represents not just a personal communications device, but a ëcommunicatingí personal identity utility, capable of helping me actually use my identity with other identities is not a far-off concept. In fact, nearly everything described above is already being done in Europe and Japan using a combination of cellular and location based wireless services.
So where does this leave the financial services industry with their non-communicating credit cards and smart cards? What if the concept of a smart-card that requires physical interaction with smart-card readers represents just enough inconvenience that consumers leap-frog them if favor of their cellular/Bluetooth enabled devices, siphoning ecommerce transactions and cash micro-payment transactions to the wireless operator?" [Digital ID World, via kuro5hin.org]
I love this kind of extrapolation, and I'm one of those that can't wait for the benefits of this kind of technology. Of course, for any of this to really work, wireless carriers are going to have to accept phone number portability, rather than fight it. Of course, by then I'll probably be an IP address anyway, so that's the number I would be more concerned about keeping.
Duck - here comes an aside!
This is the first time I've visited Digital ID World, but you can be sure I'll be back (or better yet, that'll I'll try to create a feed for my aggregator). Lots of interesting articles here, including the following:
[The Shifted Librarian]
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