Yes, we can: With a little help from a friend, AMD was finally, after 12 negative quarters, able to show a profit of 1.18 billion dollars. Things are starting to look brighter for the scene in general, although a few are still wrestling with problems.

Computational science is the field of study concerned with constructing mathematical models and numerical techniques that represent scientific, social scientific or engineering problems and employing these models on computers, or clusters of computers to analyze, explore or solve these models. Numerical simulation enables the study of complex phenomena that would be too expensive or dangerous to study by direct experimentation. The quest for ever higher levels of detail and realism in such simulations requires enormous computational capacity, and has provided the impetus for breakthroughs in computer algorithms and architectures. Due to these advances, computational scientists and engineers can now solve large scale problems that were once thought intractable by creating the related models and simulate them via high performance compute clusters or supercomputers. Simulation is being used as an integral part of the manufacturing, design and decision making processes, and as a fundamental tool for scientific research. Problems where high performance simulation play a pivotal role include for example weather and climate prediction, nuclear and energy research, simulation and design of vehicles and aircrafts, electronic design automation, astrophysics, quantum mechanics, biology, computational chemistry and more.

They were almost history, but they got a second chance and here they come: the tablet PCs. The talk at is about Microsoft, HP, Dell, Nvidia, Apple, Google and many others – and increasingly about snapping dragons, too.

Apple did it again. Just like last year at CeBIT, with the news of the Nehalem processor inside the Mac Pro, Apple’s marketing strategists managed to draw a lot of attention - without even being present as an exhibitor or actually having a product to show off.

The 32nm processors, with which Intel is initiating the era of the x86 CPUs with integrated graphics, are not exactly keeping their old promises – but yesterday’s sins are now catching up with Intel.

Just one and a half years ago, Intel published “Detecting Multi-Core Processor Topology in an IA-32 Platform” where it explained how to correctly determine the CPU topology in a future-proof way in order to optimally distribute one’s software on any system. Whoever counted on that ... will now be disabused: at least in the systems we have tested until now, the Arrandale and Clarkdale processors behave like quad-core processors with crossed out cores and so the “robust algorithm” that Intel presented then, now returns “holes” in the core IDs. And although the newest processor generation features a nice extension of the CPUID command, which can alternatively provide Information about the Topology, old software might fall flat on its face for now.

After a vague announcement at the SC09 supercomputing conference, Intel has now let the cat out of Schrödinger’s bag: the planned graphics processor Larrabee is dead and alive at once.

Nick Knupffer, the PR Manager responsible for high performance computing (HPC), officially confirmed that the Larrabee is not – as was originally planned – going to be released as a standalone product, as a GPU on a PCI express card, like Radeon or GeForce, in the first quarter of 2010. It will presumably appear sometime later, but at first only for the HPC market, not for the consumer market.

Still, the already fully developed cards are not going to be pulped, but used as development platform for the subsequent Larrabee generations.

MANNHEIM, Germany; KNOXVILLE, Tenn.; and BERKELEY, Calif.—In its third run to knock the IBM supercomputer nicknamed “Roadrunner” off the top perch on the TOP500 list of supercomputers, the Cray XT5 supercomputer known as Jaguar finally claimed the top spot on the 34^th edition of the closely watched list.

Sun’s Rock is dead; long live Rock Creek, Intel’s new experimental processor. Intel hopes for EU research funds – and for a friendlier new EU competition commissioner. AMD is going to talk about new deactivatable cores at the ISSCC conference.

HAMBURG, Germany, December 1, 2009 – ISC’10, the 25th International Supercomputing Conference urges all researchers seeking an opportunity to share their research results in the computing and scientific disciplines to submit their original work by Monday, January 11, 2010.

ISC’10 encourages papers reporting original work in theoretical, experimental and industrial research and development in the following areas:

Intel and AMD come to an arrangement and now AMD can cheerfully present new roadmaps without worrying about pesky patents. In return, problems arise between Microsoft and Intel. The Redmonders were actually planning to advice against the application of Nehalem Xeons under Windows Server 2008 R2.