Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Tuesday, August 10, 2004

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The timeline History of Internet in Finland describes have networking and internet developed in Finland in 1982-1999. I started to use computer networks in 1986-1987, first on DEC and IBM mainframes and minicomputers, and then on Unix systems and Macintoshes. Here is a notable occasion from 1991: "The first Linux version is released on the NIC.FUNET.FI server."

Multiphysical modeling, Diffpack and Elmer -- Comment()
Springer-Verlag asked about my review of the book Computational Partial Differential Equations. Here is a short summary of the review for those who can't read Finnish:

I first provided a bit of background on computatational science. After this I gave a few general remarks about Diffpack and the book.
I provided a short overview of the contents of the book, including developing new solution algorithms and multiphysical modeling. I compared Diffpack to the Elmer software developed at CSC, explaining the strenghts and differences of Diffpack. I'm a bit sceptic towards using C++ in scientific computing, which I also mentioned. If you already know Fortran, Elmer (or some other Fortran-based tool) may be the best choice.
The end of the review gave encouraging words to potential users of the book and Diffpack. There are a lot of unsolved problems to model and simulate, and tools like Diffpack are essential in tackling these questions.

Future of scientific computing -- Comment()
I submitted today a three-page article on scientific computing to a Finnish IT magazine. The magazine wanted an 'interesting' and 'entertaining' story, and I did my best. I found a lot of nice examples, including illustrations, from global climate modeling, turbulent flows, modeling the human heart, and simulating cell membranes. I hope the text fits the readers of the magazine, who may not have any background in modeling and simulation. Writing this article was rewarding, and I established some new connections to Finnish researchers in the process of writing the text.

-- Comment()
NASA To Get 10,240 Node Itanium 2 Linux Cluster: "US space agency Nasa is to get a massive supercomputing boost to help get its shuttle missions back in action after the 2003 shuttle disaster. Project Columbia, a collaboration with two technology giants, will mean Nasa's computing power will be ramped up by 10 times to do complex simulations." [Slashdot:]