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Submission + - GPU supercomputer could crunch exabyte of data for Square Kilometre Array (techrepublic.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02, 2012 @09:31AM

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers on the Square Kilometre Array project to build the world's largest radio telescope believe that a GPU cluster could be suited to stitching together the more than an exabyte of data that will be gathered by the telescope each day after its completion in 2024. One of the project heads said that graphics cards could be cut out for the job because of their high I/O and core count, adding that a conventional CPU-based supercomputer doesn't have the necessary I/O bandwidth to do the work.

Submission + - Missing paperwork delays UK broadband (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by

nk497

on Thursday August 02, 2012 @08:36AM

nk497 writes: "UK broadband funding is being delayed... by missing paperwork. The government is doling out £530m to boost UK broadband, but needs European Commission approval first. The department responsible for broadband says it's sent the necessary documents, but the EC says it hasn't received them. It's the latest delay to the funding, following competition concerns over BT's dominance in the market."

Submission + - Is it time for an OpenGL revolution? (extremetech.com)

Submitted by

MrSeb

on Thursday August 02, 2012 @08:20AM

MrSeb writes: "In a scary twist that reinforces Valve’s distaste for Windows 8, it turns out that the Source engine — the 3D engine that powers Half Life 2, Left 4 Dead, and Dota 2 — runs faster on Ubuntu 12.04 and OpenGL (315 fps) than Windows 7 and DirectX/Direct3D (270.6 fps); almost a 20% speed-up. These figures are remarkable, considering Valve has been refining the Source engine’s performance under Windows for almost 10 years, while the Valve Linux team has only been working on the Linux port of Source for a few months. Valve attributes the speed-up to the “underlying efficiency of the [Linux] kernel and OpenGL.” But here’s the best bit: Using these new OpenGL optimizations to the Source engine, the OpenGL version of L4D2 on Windows is now faster than the DirectX version (303.4 fps vs. 270.6 fps). If OpenGL is faster, and it has a comparable feature set, and hardware support is excellent... why is Direct3D still the de facto API? With Windows losing its gaming crown and smartphones (OpenGL ES!) gaining in popularity, is it time for an OpenGL revolution?"

Empathy Is For the Birds 201

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday June 30, 2010 @10:30PM from the polly-want-to-make-an-emotional-connection? dept.

grrlscientist writes "Common Ravens have been shown to express empathy towards a 'friend' or relative when they are distressed after an aggressive conflict — just like humans and chimpanzees do. But birds are very distant evolutionary relatives of Great Apes, so what does this similarity imply about the evolution of behavior?"

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