Imagine if phones never got hot no matter how many apps were running. Picture a future where supercomputers use less energy, electric cars charge faster, and life-saving medical devices stay cooler and last longer.
In a study published in Nature Materials, a team of engineers at the University of Virginia and their collaborators revealed a radical new way to move heat, faster than ever before. Using a special kind of crystal called hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), they found a way to move heat like a beam of light, sidestepping the usual bottlenecks that make electronics overheat.
“We’re rethinking how we handle heat,” said Patrick Hopkins, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and Whitney Stone Professor of Engineering at UVA. “Instead of letting it slowly trickle away, we’re directing it.”
Google unveils Ironwood, its seventh-generation TPU chip delivering 42.5 exaflops of AI compute power — 24x more than the world’s fastest supercomputer — ushering in the “age of inference.”
Both systems are powered by AMD GPUs—Frontier is equipped with 9,408 AMD EPYC processors and 37,632 AMD Instinct MI250X accelerators, while El Capitan features 44,544 of the newer AMD Instinct MI300A accelerators.
Given the success with this simulation, Ansys has hailed AMD’s Instinct GPUs for cutting the simulation time. According to the company, this milestone could dramatically speed up the design iterations and deliver more accurate performance forecasts for industrial systems.
The Gefion AI Supercomputer (GAIS) project, which delivers Denmark’s first artificial intelligence (AI) turbo-charged supercomputer, has positioned Denmark as the most advanced of the Nordic region’s quantum computing investing nations.
It also serves to accelerate the use of AI to drive innovation across Denmark’s business and industrial sectors.
Built on the Nvidia DGX SuperPOD AI supercomputer, GAIS is powered by 1,528 Nvidia H100 Tensor Core graphics processing units (GPUs) and interconnected using Nvidia Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking.
A major breakthrough in quantum computing has just been achieved by American researchers at MIT. This innovation, dubbed the “quantum superhighway”, revolutionizes communication between quantum processors and opens up promising new prospects for the development of more powerful and efficient supercomputers.
Quantum computers today represent the cutting edge of computing technology, capable of solving problems far beyond the capabilities of conventional supercomputers. However, their efficiency depends on fast, precise communication between their various processors. This is precisely the challenge that American engineers have just met.
The innovation developed by the MIT team consists of an interconnection device enabling instant communication between quantum processors. Unlike traditional “point-to-point” link systems, which are prone to increasing errors during data transfer, this “quantum superhighway” promotes far more efficient “all-to-all” communication.
The new DGX machines are portable but powerful enough to drive complex AI modules and research, with processing capabilities previously only available in data centers.
Researchers harness the power of the world’s most advanced supercomputers to simulate the inner workings of cellular machinery that repairs DNA and helps prevent life-threatening diseases. Sunburn and premature aging are well-known consequences of exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation, tobacco s
“The meaningful difference,” argues Silverstein, “comes down to our lifespan. For humans, our mortality defines so much of our experience. If a human commits murder and receives a life sentence, we understand what that means: a finite number of years. But if a UI with an indefinite lifespan commits murder, what do life sentences mean? Are we talking about a regular human lifespan? 300 years? A thousand? Then there’s love and relationships. Let’s say you find your soulmate and spend a thousand years together. At some point, you may decide you had a good run and move on with someone else. The idea of not growing old with someone feels alien and upsetting. But if we were to live hundreds or thousands of years, our perceptions of relationships and identity may change fundamentally.”
“One of the best” because — in addition to having a well-crafted, suspenseful, and heartfelt narrative about love and loss — thoughtfully engages with both the technical and philosophical questions raised by its cerebral premise: Is a perfect digital copy of a person’s mind still meaningfully human? Does uploaded intelligence, which combines the processing power of a supercomputer with the emotional intelligence of a sentient being, have a competitive edge over cold, unfeeling artificial intelligence? How would uploaded intelligence compromise ethics or geopolitical strategy?
“Underrated” because was produced by — and first aired on — AMC+, a streaming service that, owing to the dominance of Netflix, HBO Max, Disney+, and Amazon Prime, has but a fraction of its competitors’ subscribers and which, motivated by losses in ad revenue, ended up canceling the show’s highly anticipated (and fully completed) second season in exchange for tax write-offs. Although has since been salvaged by Netflix, […] its troubled distribution history resulted in the show becoming a bit of a hidden gem, rather than the global hit it could have been, had it premiered on a platform with more eyeballs.
Still, the fact that managed to endure and build a steadily growing cult following is a testament to the show’s quality and cultural relevance. Although the concept of uploaded intelligence is nothing new, and has been tackled by other prominent sci-fi properties like Black Mirror and Altered Carbon, is unique in that it not only explores how this hypothetical technology would affect us on a personal level, but also explores how it might play out on a societal level. Furthermore, takeis a nuanced one, rejecting both techno-pessimism and techno-optimism in favor of what series creator Craig Silverstein calls “techno-realism.”
