Tag Archives: Technology/Internet

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Los Alamos Lab’s Roadrunner Supercomputer To Be Shut Down

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The fastest supercomputer in the world in 2009 will be shutdown today, according to the Los Alamos National Labs.

8599713655_c725fb6f3d_bRoadrunner, the first supercomputer to break the once-elusive petaflop barrier—one million billion calculations per second—will be decommissioned on Sunday, March 31.

Roadrunner’s design was unique, and controversial. It combined two different kinds of processors, making it a “hybrid.” It had 6,563 dual-core general-purpose processors (AMD Opterons™), with each core linked to a special graphics processor (PowerXCell 8i) called a “Cell.” The Cell was an enhanced version of a specialized processor originally designed for the Sony Playstation 3®, adapted specifically to support scientific computing.

Future supercomputers will need to improve on Roadrunner’s energy efficiency to make the power bill affordable. Future supercomputers will also need new solutions for handling and storing the vast amounts of data involved in such massive calculations.

Intel Expands Again In Arizona

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From the azcentral article “Intel to build $300 million research facility in Chandler“

Construction already is under way on the 285,000-square-foot research facility at Intel’s Chandler campus, northwest of Rural Road and Chandler Boulevard.

The construction project will employ nearly 1,000 workers and is scheduled to be completed in the second half of 2013, Intel officials said.

Intel Vice President and Director of Assembly and Test Technology Development Babak Sabi said the new facility would be used for “package development.”

“Package” refers to the housing around a microchip used to connect the chip to a computer board, Sabi said.

Former Intel Employee Gets 3 Years Of Prison

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From the Associated Press article “Ex-Intel Worker Gets 3 years for stealing Secrets“

A former Intel Corp. worker in Massachusetts has been sentenced to three years in federal prison for stealing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of computer chip manufacturing and design secrets while working for a rival company.

I think he was working at Intel when he was hired by AMD and that’s when he started downloading internal documents. He may have had the idea to sell the documents to AMD but AMD said they didn’t put him up to it and had nothing to do with it.

Extracting Gas From Air

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A article on azcentral.com titled “Air Products grows to keep up with Intel” explains how Air Products makes air products and ships them to the Intel site in Arizona. This is probably similar to how it’s done for Intel in Rio Rancho, NM.

The company removes all components of air except nitrogen, oxygen and argon. Then in those white, angular towers, it separates out those three gases with very low temperatures. Oxygen turns to liquid at minus 297.3 degrees Fahrenheit, and nitrogen turns to liquid at minus 320 degrees.

Then the liquid is boiled, producing pure gas.

“We use compression and expansion, like the air-conditioning unit on the outside of a house,” Jordan explained.

Nitrogen gas made in Chandler goes directly into the pipeline, a structure intended to last 100 years.

Sandia labs Laser Guided Bullett

Your Tax Dollars At Work: Laser Guided Bullets

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Sandia labs Laser Guided Bullett

The four-inch-long bullet has actuators that steer tiny fins that guide it to its target. Photo by Randy Montoya from Sandia Labs

Sandia Labs scientists had developed laser guided bullets. Really they are mini guided missals.

Sandia’s design for the four-inch-long bullet includes an optical sensor in the nose to detect a laser beam on a target. The sensor sends information to guidance and control electronics that use an algorithm in an eight-bit central processing unit to command electromagnetic actuators. These actuators steer tiny fins that guide the bullet to the target.

New Mexico’s Basis International Wins Against RIM

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A New Mexico company, BASIS International Ltd, has won a restraining order against Research in Motion maker of the Blackberry phone. According to the New York Times, RIM has changed the name of it’s operating system and it has nothing to do with the lawsuit.

Less than two months after Research In Motion announced that its new operating system to revive the BlackBerry brand would be called BBX, the company has changed its mind. Now, it will be called BlackBerry 10.

The late change followed the granting of a restraining order on Tuesday by a federal court in New Mexico to a small Albuquerque-based software maker, Basis International, that has long used the name BBx.

In a statement on Wednesday about the name change, RIM did not address the trademark infringement action by Basis International. “The BlackBerry 10 name reflects the significance of the new platform and will leverage the global strength of the BlackBerry brand while also aligning perfectly with RIM’s device branding,” the statement said. RIM did not respond to questions about whether it has abandoned the BBX name.

Some Company To Build Fake City In New Mexico

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Some Company I never heard of is going to build a fake city somewhere in the Albuquerque Metro area. the 20 square mile city will be used to… test technologies? Why they can’t do the same thing is a real city is beyond my understand of the press release.

Pegasus Global Holdings, an international technology development firm, is announcing plans to develop The Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation (The Center), a first of its scale and scope fully integrated testing and evaluation facility for new and emerging technologies. With offices in Washington, DC; Reston, Virginia; and London, UK, Pegasus Global plans to locate the privately owned, commercially operated facility in the State of New Mexico
The Center will resemble a mid-sized American city, including urban canyons, suburban neighborhoods, rural communities and distant localities. It will offer the only of its kind opportunity to replicate the real-world challenges of upgrading existing city infrastructure to that of a 21st Century smart city, operating within a green economy.

Monsoon

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First real monsoon rain of 2011 in the Albuquerque & Rio Rancho area, and first real rain in about 6 months. Captured on a Fuji Finepix F550EXR, edited in Apple FinalCut Pro X and uploaded to YouTube.

Site Traffic Post Google PR Update

Google Page Rank Update Kills Traffic

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Google has apparently made a page rank algorithm update on about June 23rd 2011. I can tell because traffic at greginthedesert.net has dropped to about 1/100 of it’s normal traffic.

This is not the first time a Google PR update has affected traffic negatively and I’m hopeful this will be a temporary situation as it has been before.