Today MemComputing announced that its Xtreme Performance Computing (XPC) Software as a Service (SaaS) will be made free for evaluation to all researchers and developers working in response to the COVID-19 crisis. This initiative comes from MemComputing’s ambition to identify opportunities where its technology may aid the fight against the global pandemic. “MemComputing harnesses the power of physics to dramatically reduce compute times for today’s most complex computational problems associated with optimization, big data analytics, and machine learning. By providing a free evaluation of the MemCPU XPC SaaS, MemComputing hopes to accelerate the process of finding solutions to the COVID-19 crisis on a global scale.”
Podcast: Supercomputers Battle Coronavirus
April 9, 2020 by
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at how supercomputers are being used to battle the coronavirus. “We discuss how the supercomputing community has joined the fight and the impact on the battle against the virus. We do our best to keep the conversation light, knowing that everyone out there is suffering from the virus – it’s the one thing we all have in common these days.”
APAC HPC-AI Competition Expands to Address COVID-19
April 8, 2020 by
The HPC-AI Advisory Council and the National Supercomputing Centre in Singapore announced today that they have joined the global fight against COVID-19 by expanding the 2020 APAC HPC-AI competition to address education and applied learning towards accelerating bioscience research and discovery. “As part of the updated competition, student teams are now tasked to research, find and choose an HPC or AI application that can potentially be used as part of the global fight against COVID-19. Teams must demonstrate testing and benchmarking of the application, as well as explain how this application can best be accelerated. In addition, teams will also be required to focus on tuning and accelerating NAMD, a molecular dynamics code designed for high-performance simulation of large biomolecular systems.”
HPE Financial Services Offers $2 billion in Financing and New Programs to Help Customers and Partners Weather COVID-19
April 8, 2020 by
Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced today that HPE Financial Services (HPEFS) is designating more than $2 billion in financing specifically to help customers with their financial challenges stemming from the COVID-19 crisis, including cash-flow or liquidity issues. HPE Financial Services is also introducing initiatives including a Payment Relief Program to help customers acquire new technology and alleviate some of the financial strain as they navigate this uncertain climate. “This is a challenging time to lead a business. Today more than ever, IT leaders and CFOs play a central role in ensuring financial health while continuing operations”, said Irv Rothman, President and CEO of HPE Financial Services. “At HPE Financial Services, we are committed to helping businesses align their priorities from an IT economics perspective and provide them with concrete solutions so they can move forward.”
Intel Commits $50 Million to Pandemic Response Technology Initiative
April 7, 2020 by
Today, Intel pledged an additional $50 million in a pandemic response technology initiative to combat the coronavirus through accelerating access to technology at the point of patient care, speeding scientific research and ensuring access to online learning for students. Included in Intel’s effort is an additional innovation fund for requests where access to Intel expertise and resources can have immediate impact. “We hope that by sharing our expertise, resources and technology, we can help to accelerate work that saves lives and expands access to critical services around the world during this challenging time.”
Fugaku Supercomputer joins fight against COVID-19
April 7, 2020 by
Today RIKEN in Japan announced that the partially finished Fugaku supercomputer will be made available for research projects aimed to combat COVID-19. The installation of the new supercomputer began in December 2019, and it is scheduled to go into full-fledged open use in 2021. “To combat the global pandemic of the COVID-19 virus, we will rapidly provide access to the capabilities of Fugaku, leapfrogging its preparation, to accelerate the scientific process of diagnosis, treatment, as well as general prevention of infection spread, to contribute to the early termination of the pandemic.”
Podcast: How crowd-sourced supercomputing is helping fight COVID-19
April 5, 2020 by
In this Roadhouse podcast, Dr. Greg Bowman from Folding @ Home describes the how crowdsourced computing is being used to fight the coronavirus and how we can get involved. “We are excited to announce a new batch of small molecule screening simulations are now up and running on Folding@home! These simulations will help prioritize which molecules will be synthesized and assayed by the COVID Moonshot aiming to rapidly developing new therapies against the SARS-CoV-2 main viral protease.”
NERSC Supercomputer to Help Fight Coronavirus
April 4, 2020 by
“NERSC is a member of the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium. In support of the Consortium, NERSC has reserved a portion of its Director’s Discretionary Reserve time on Cori, a Cray XC40 supercomputer, to support COVID-19 research efforts. The GPU partition on Cori was installed to help prepare applications for the arrival of Perlmutter, NERSC’s next-generation system that is scheduled to begin arriving later this year and will rely on GPUs for much of its computational power.”
ICHEC: Satellite Data Indicates Illegal Burning in Rural Areas of Ireland During COVID-19 Shutdown
April 3, 2020 by
Satellite Data analyzed by scientists from ICHEC (Irish Centre for High-End Computing) using European Space Agency Sentinel 5-P satellite data shows evidence of Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) emissions in a number of rural areas during February and March 2020. “ICHEC released imagery today, April 3 in which the scientists observed general reductions in emissions (blue areas of the maps) from the lower levels of activity in the economy due to COVID-19 but also observed a few spikes (red areas) on some dates, most likely associated with fires in rural areas.”
Altair offers free training tools and software licensing in response to COVID-19
April 2, 2020 by
Over at the Altair Blog, CEO James Scapa writes that the company is offering free training tools and software licensing in response to COVID-19. “Altair can provide temporary software licenses for clients working from home without access to their enterprise Altair software solutions with no additional fees or charges. If customers wish to move their HyperWorks Units from on-premises to Altair hosted servers or require temporary software licenses, they should contact their account representative.”
