Kevin Lepton

Supercomputers Are Getting More Energy Efficient

Jun 182012

Unlike some doomsday movies where large supercomputers take over the world and in doing so drain the Earth’s energy resources so that only they can “live” and others must perish, the reality is that supercomputers are now getting more energy efficient.

In fact, six months ago some of the same Top10 supercomputers were less energy efficient than they are right now.

According to Techworld.com here is a short list of some of the most energy efficient supercomputers:

An Intel cluster with SandyBridge and MIC technology installed at Intel with 1176 MFlops/watt (number 150 on the list)
An Appro Xtreme-X SandyBridge-based cluster installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory with 1050 MFlops/watt (number 73)
A Chinese system called Mole-8.5 with nVidia accelerators with 919 Mflops/watt (number 21)
The Fujitsu K Computer at RIKEN with 830 Mflops/watt (number 2)

And they go on to say, “At the European Nuclear Research Organisation (CERN) near Geneva, for example, scientists often complain that power limitations are having a knock-on effect on the performance of their experiments.”

So, the future trend is not only for more powerful supercomputers but also ones that consumer less energy while doing all the heavy lifting that they need to do. In the next few years, I predict supercomputers will in fact be producing much more energy than they consume. Or not.

Augmented Reality and Barometers in Smart Phones

Augmented Reality Comments Off

May 032012

According to Juniper Research, the Next Big Thing in Smart Phones will be not only the use of augmented reality, but barometers that calculate tiny changes in elevation. Augmented reality is already being introduced into Smart Phones in the area of MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems).

Items such as accelerometers and compasses are soooooo last year. Gyroscope technology will help smart phone and electronic tablet users orient themselves and their screens to their environments.

The barometers embedded into electronic devices will work with GPS systems so that Maps will work indoors. This will be helpful if a person is at a large college campus and needs to find a room, at a large corporate campus, shopping mall, museum or any other indoor location where GPS now fails.

The price of MEMS have come done as smart phone manufacturers are under increasing pressure to add more value and bring costs down.

According to PC World, “Juniper predicts that annual revenues generated by MEMS devices built into mobile phones – including sensors, audio, displays and radio frequency components – will exceed $6.3 billion by 2016. However, unit prices for MEMS devices will continue to fall rapidly, meaning that vendors will need to have guaranteed volumes in order to commit to cost and price reductions.”

And, not only will your smart phone increase exponentially in its intelligence because of MEMS, it will also increase the augmented reality portion of displaying data you need overlapping real life as you see it. And this will make you a tad savvier as well.

Virtual Reality to Help Parkinson’s Patients

Future Medical Technology Comments Off

Apr 112012

Half of all Parkinson’s Disease patients suffer from a condition called freeze of gait (FOG). This feeling of being stuck to the floor happens mostly when patients are walking through narrow places like doorways.

According to India.com, “Researchers may have hit upon a new way of helping Parkinson’s victims who face difficulty in walking. They are hoping to use a simulated virtual reality environment to help patients suffering from the phenomenon known as ‘freezing of gait’ (FOG). FOG affects over half of all Parkinson’s patients, and is commonly triggered by having to walk through narrow doorways.”

Now, researchers at the Brain and Mind Research Institute (BMRI), University of Sydney, Australia are helping patients to train their brains using a virtual environment. This new virtual reality is filled with halls and doorways that patients must navigate.

This kind of virtual physical therapy may help patients avoid medications or surgery that come with their own inherent risks.

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