Content about high-performance computing

Scientists in the US and France are gaining new insights into the genetic processes underlying brain development. The research has the potential to revolutionize the way mental disorders are both diagnosed and treated — and could have major repurcussions for the way drugs are designed in the future.

With current testing methods unable to accurately assess the more than 2 million experiences of concussion in the US each year, advancements in diagnosis and treatment are critical. Revolutionary, high-resolution 'virtual recordings' of electrical currents in the brain could provide a solution.

Scientists go to the ends of the Earth to study the current state of polar ice sheets, collecting vast amounts of data — three to four terabytes per flight. Read about the clustered computing system and high-speed network in the clouds that make this possible.

With the year almost over we look back at the debates, controversies, and achievements in the world of science and computing. Read our countdown of iSGTW’s most popular stories of 2012. 

Is it a cloud, is it a star; well, whatever the object known to astrophysicists as 'G2' is exactly, by the end of 2012 it will start being torn apart by our Milky Way's supermassive black hole.

Extreme science continues to advance, making increased computational resources critical to ongoing discovery. The role of exascale systems in this advancement remains a question, as does the US role in moving exascale forward.

Graphical processing units have certainly helped today's high performance computers reach improved levels of energy efficiency, but will they be able to deliver similar power savings in the future to help overcome the looming 'power wall'?

Speakers at the SC12 conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, highlight the role of scientific research in continuing to drive and benefit from high performance computing. They argued that a strong voice for the continued advancement of technology is vital in ensuring evolving research and economic leadership.

The Sequoia supercomputer has simulated the human heart at an unprecedented scale, a breakthrough for the use of computational medicine by doctors to prevent sudden cardiac death.

Catherine Gater reports from the e-Challenges 2012 conference in Lisbon on the difficulties of multiscale modeling and asks where a future with peta- and exascale computing might take us.

Scientific computation is a research field with an excellent track record when it comes to technology and knowledge transfer. Now, with the global economic crisis taking its toll on public science budgets, the need for other research communities to learn from this example has never been greater.