Tag Archives: UniversityOfIllinois

University of Illinois’ Blue Waters supercomputer now running around the clock

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University of Illinois' Blue Waters supercomputer now running around the clock

Things got a tad hairy for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Blue Waters supercomputer when IBM halted work on it in 2011, but with funding from the National Science Foundation, the one-petaflop system is now crunching numbers 24/7. The behemoth resides within the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and is composed of 237 Cray XE6 cabinets and 32 of the XK7 variety. NVIDIA GK110 Kepler GPU accelerators line the inside of the machine and are flanked by 22,640 compute nodes, which each pack two AMD 6276 Interlagos processors clocked at 2.3 GHz or higher. At its peak performance, the rig can churn out 11.61 quadrillion calculations per second. According to the NCSA, all that horsepower earns Blue Waters the title of the most powerful supercomputer on a university campus. Now that it's cranking away around-the-clock, it'll be used in projects investigating everything from how viruses infect cells to weather predictions.

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Source: National Center for Supercomputing Applications

University of Illinois’ Blue Waters supercomputer now running around the clock

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University of Illinois' Blue Waters supercomputer now running around the clock

Things got a tad hairy for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Blue Waters supercomputer when IBM halted work on it in 2011, but with funding from the National Science Foundation, the one-petaflop system is now crunching numbers 24/7. The behemoth resides within the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and is composed of 237 Cray XE6 cabinets and 32 of the XK7 variety. NVIDIA GK110 Kepler GPU accelerators line the inside of the machine and are flanked by 22,640 compute nodes, which each pack two AMD 6276 Interlagos processors clocked at 2.3 GHz or higher. At its peak performance, the rig can churn out 11.61 quadrillion calculations per second. According to the NCSA, all that horsepower earns Blue Waters the title of the most powerful supercomputer on a university campus. Now that it's cranking away around-the-clock, it'll be used in projects investigating everything from how viruses infect cells to weather predictions.

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Source: National Center for Supercomputing Applications

Researchers print biometric sensors directly on skin, make wearable health monitors more durable

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Researchers print biometric sensors directly on skin, make wearable health monitors more durableMC10 might be best known for its wearable electronics aimed at athletes, but the company also makes a medical diagnostic sticker called a biostamp. Its creator (and MC10 co-founder), John Rogers has refined that design so that it's no longer an elastomer sticker -- now he can apply the biostamp's thin, stretchy electronics directly on human skin, and bond it with commercially available spray-on bandage material. By losing the elastomer backing of the original biostamp and applying the circuits directly to the skin, Rogers and his team at the University of Illinois were able to shave the device's thickness to 1/30th of the (already quite thin) biostamp. That super thin profile means it conforms even better to the contours of human hide and makes it shower- and swim-proof during the two weeks it lasts before being naturally exfoliated with your skin.

For those unfamiliar with what the biostamp does, it's a mesh of circuits and sensors that can record electrophysiological data like skin temperature and hydration state of the wearer. The new biostamp won't be in your doctor's tool box any time soon, however, as Rogers and his team are still refining the wireless power and communication technologies it leverages. Of course, once those problems are solved, there's a good chance we'll see MC10 turning it into a commercial product.

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Via: The Verge

Source: MIT Technology Review

Stretchable, serpentine lithium-ion battery works at three times its usual size

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Stretchable, serpentine lithiumion battery works at three times its size

While we've seen more than a few flexible batteries in our day, they're not usually that great at withstanding tugs and pulls. A team-up between Northwestern University and the University of Illinois could give lithium-ion batteries that extreme elasticity with few of the drawbacks you'd expect. To make a stretchable battery that still maintains a typical density, researchers built electrode interconnects from serpentine metal wires that have even more wavy wires inside; the wires don't require much space in normal use, but will unfurl in an ordered sequence as they're pulled to their limits. The result is a prototype battery that can expand to three times its normal size, but can still last for eight to nine hours. It could also charge wirelessly, and thus would be wearable under the skin as well as over -- imagine fully powered implants where an external battery is impractical or unsightly. There's no word yet on whether there will be refined versions coming to real-world products, but we hope any developments arrive quickly enough to give stretchable electronics a viable power source.

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Via: ScienceDaily

Source: Nature

SpiderSense ultrasonic radar suit lets you know when danger is near

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SpiderSense suit lets you know when danger is near

Know that feeling when someone wanders too far into your personal space? The University of Illinois' Victor Mateevitsi does, which is why he'd built a suit that does the job to a far greater degree of accuracy. SpiderSense is a onesie that uses a series of microphones to rend and receive ultrasonic signals from the space around you, like high frequency radar. When the outfit senses something approaching, a robotic arm corresponding to the microphone exerts pressure on your skin, pointing you in the direction of the danger. Mateevitsi tested the gear by blindfolding researchers and asking them to throw a cardboard ninja star whenever (and wherever) they sensed a threat -- with positive results 95 percent of the time. SpiderSense will get its first public showing at Stuttgart's Augmented Human conference in March and it's hoped that the hardware will eventually help Blind people get around easier.

[Image Credit: Lance Long]

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Via: New Scientist

Source: Victor Mateevitsi

John Rogers returns with a silicon-silk circuit that dissolves inside your body

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John Rogers returns with a siliconsilk circuit that dissolves inside your body

While you'd be forgiven for not knowing who John Rogers is, he's certainly graced these pages more than once. He's the research chief at the University of Illinois that's previously broken new ground in the world of invisibility cloaks and wearable technology. This time, his team has cooked up a silicon, magnesium, magnesium oxide and silk circuit that's designed to dissolve in the body in the same way that absorbable sutures are used in minor surgeries. It's thought that the tech could eventually be used to implant monitors that never need removal, reducing invasive medical procedures, or even build devices that eventually turn into compost rather than E-waste -- although we're not sure we'd appreciate our smartphone doing the same thing when we're making calls in the rain.

[Image Credit: Fiorenzo Omenetto / Science]

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John Rogers returns with a silicon-silk circuit that dissolves inside your body originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Sep 2012 08:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Supercomputer gets a memory boost with 380 petabytes of magnetic tape

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Supercomputer gets a memory boost with 380 petabytes of magnetic tape

Remember the Cray XK6 at the University of Illinois that drives the National Science Foundation's Blue Waters project? Well, it looks like it's getting a little memory upgrade, sorta. We're not talking a slick new SSD here, or even a sweet NAS, all that computational power requires nothing less than... tape. Okay, so it's actually a full storage infrastructure, and some of it -- 25 petabytes no less -- will be disk-based. The rest -- a not insignificant 380 petabytes -- will be the good old magnetic stuff. The idea is that the disk part will be used for instant access, with the tape section serving as "nearline" storage -- something between an archive and online solution. Spectra Logic is providing the tape, and says it'll take a couple of years to implement the whole lot. Once complete, the system will support the supercomputer's lofty tasks, such as understanding how the cosmos evolved after the Big Bang and, y'know designing new materials at the atomic level. And we thought we were excited about out next desktop.

Supercomputer gets a memory boost with 380 petabytes of magnetic tape originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 May 2012 13:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Engineer Guy shows how a phone accelerometer works, knows what’s up and sideways (video)

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We love finding out how things work, and arguably one of the most important parts of the smartphones and tablets we thrive on is the accelerometer gauging our device's orientation. Imagine our delight, then, when we see the University of Illinois' Bill Hammack (i.e. The Engineer Guy) giving a visual rundown of how accelerometers work. Although it's certainly the Cliff's Notes version of what's going on in your Android phone or iPhone, the video does a great job of explaining the basic concepts behind three-axis motion sensing and goes on to illustrate how MEMS chips boil the idea down to the silicon form that's needed for our mobile hardware. Hammack contends that it's one of the coolest (and unsung) parts of a smartphone, and we'd definitely agree; you can see why in the clip after the break.

Continue reading Engineer Guy shows how a phone accelerometer works, knows what's up and sideways (video)

Engineer Guy shows how a phone accelerometer works, knows what's up and sideways (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 May 2012 20:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A bird in the hand thanks to a robot that can perch

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Bird-like robot shown perching on human hand

Land-bound robots? Been there, done that. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are taking things up a notch with a bird-style bot capable of autonomous flight. By replicating the features that enable birds to make a soft landing -- including the flapping wings that help them change direction -- the researchers developed the first micro aerial vehicle (MAV) capable of swooping down to perch on a human hand. The craft forgoes a vertical tail, which birds also lack, to allow for enough agility to land on a small surface. Articulated wings help the robo-bird complete the maneuver successfully, by first gliding into position and then pitching up and slowing down. Who knew perching was so complicated? Besides just providing a super-nifty party trick for these lucky researchers, the autonomous aircraft could be used in urban surveillance, where a small size would come in handy. Check out the MAV in action, along with the press release, after the break.

Continue reading A bird in the hand thanks to a robot that can perch

A bird in the hand thanks to a robot that can perch originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 May 2012 06:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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