2012: No-Space Odyssey

Year 2012 has started. We can definitely say that science-fiction predictions have failed. It's even worse - we regressed since the Space Race between Russia and USA. We still send new spy satellites, telescopes, and other galaxy scanners, but human species is unlikely to colonize planets, not even the Moon. Crewed space programmes are expensive, time-consuming, and fruitless from a short-term political perspective. World's super-empires prioritise development of new-breed tanks, spy drones and cyber-soliders. Economic crisis has hit space industry heavily - NASA shuts down space shuttle programme, Russia screwed up most of the recent attempts to put satellites up in the Earth orbit (three failures in six months!) and European Union don't have money anyway. China will most likely send a super-laser into a near-orbit, rather then human crew to set up base on the Mars. Virgin Galactic will most likely send rich tourists into a near-orbit, to experience 5 minutes of weightlessness for £250,000.

Priceless? Not really. Let's face it - our generation lost the space revolution, and the future of space industry is bleak. It is the Cyberpunk vision that becomes increasingly real - the egocentric revolution of virtual reality, cybernetic body modifications and organ growing. Lack of natural resources, ultra-interactive (pop) entertainment, heavy militarised border security. Extreme liberalisation contrasting with extreme policing. Extreme capitalism - no social benefits, no free health care, no subsidised education, no aid for developing countries.

Yes, we will probably increase our lifespan, through trangenetically growth liver, second heart and stem cell theraphy. Yes, we will probably be able to plug silicon based microchips into the brain to expand our senses, perception, boost memory and reading time, skill learning and information processing. Yes, we will probably beat cancer, AIDS, swine flu, and create hundred deadly viruses in the process. Yes, we will probably find a way to get energy from fusion, create self-steering electric cars and grow a strawberry that cures hangover. Finally, we will probably get Facebook status displayed directly to our visual cortex with the face matching and personality analysis on every person we pass on the street. But is that it?

Welcome to 2012 - happy new year and hope we can still dream of science-fiction.

Image source: NASA

Geek On Conference: Application of Chaos Mathematics in Psychological Research

(La Foresta, Belgium, 22nd May - 1st April)

This is an ultimate ERASMUS training. Fifty PhD students from 12 different universities and 14 professors closed in old monastery (now converted into conference center) for 10 days. We will try to figure out how to apply non-linear dynamic systems, catastrophe theory and Bayesian modeling in psychological research. Every day there are 10 hours of workshops, seminars, tutorials, practical sessions. It is hard. Extremely hard. But the interdisciplinary mix of people from psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, mathematics and computing are making it a unique workshop.

We only arrived today, but I will report regularly from La Foresta to update you on this amazing and strange training.

What are Supercomputers doing at the moment?

As China joins the list of fastest Supercomputers on the 5th place, it is maybe worth to look at what are the main application areas for the top 500 Supercomputers.

It is always difficult to look at details of major projects run by supercomputers, because there is so much they are doing every second. For example the fastest supercomputer in the world, Jaguar, is able to run 1759 petaflops (1 petaflop = quadrillion operations per second) and has 224,162 processors. From their website it seems that astrophysics (supernova collapse), superconductors and fusion plasmas are top priorities, although other disciplines have reasonable share in Jaguar processing time.

It is hard to find out what research the Chinese supercomputer, Tianjin-1, is going to be used for. They indicated that petroleum exploration and the simulation of large aircraft designs would be major areas. Still, it belongs to The Chinese National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), so...

Now, what about general patterns of application for other remaining 500 supercomputers? Lets take first 6 major ones. While it is 'not specified' what is the application of 117 of them, 78 is used for research, 47 - finance, 34 - information service, 31 - geophysics, 30 - logistic services, 22 - semiconductors. Not bad. The question is - what kind of research (78)? If geophysics or superconductors are there, together with aerospace, medicine and life sciences, this must be cell biology or advanced physics.

Table 1: Supercomputers application area (source: top500.org)

However, things get complicated when we look at segments of market the computers are working for. The leading is industry - using 62.4% of them (312). This is followed by research - 18.2% (91) and academic segment - 15.8% (79). That would indicate (only by subjective correlation) that the majority of 'research' (from the application area table) is done for industry, and therefore have some commercial application. This might be pretty much everything, from new face-scrub recipe and GM crop to design of super-submarine or space craft. However, deeper inquire reveal that massive calculating power is bought by stock market companies for so called 'high-frequency trading' (HFT). In HFT supercomputers make calculations, predictions and decisions by analyzing ongoing flow of data from stock market and test it against historical data. And it all occurs very, very fast - they can handle 10,000 orders per second. HFT is a topic I will discuss on different occasion, some people contribute credit crunch on this strategy, but certainly we live in strange and beautiful times, your company has miliseconds advantage over the others, and it matters, and it already occurs without human intervention - how could it be differently now?

I guess that nicely summarizes the topic - supercomputers are where the money are. And what the do - well, calculate those money ;-)

Table 2: Countries with highest number of supercomputers and number of supercomputers used in different market segments (source: top500.org)

[data source: www.top500.org]
[photo credit: ORLN]