Last week I shared my interview with Thermodynamic Computing workshop organizers, Tom Conte (Georgia Tech) and Todd Hylton (UC San Diego) and workshop participant Christof Teuscher in What is Thermodynamic Computing? Part 1. Part 2 of What is Thermodynamic Computing? is now available for streaming or download on Soundcloud (embed below), or you find it on iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Play. In this episode I interview workshop organizer, Natesh Ganesh, a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who is interested in the physical limits to computing, brain inspired hardware, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, and emergence of intelligence in self-organized systems. He was awarded the best paper award at IEEE ICRC’17 for the paper  A Thermodynamic Treatment of Intelligent Systems. I also speak with workshop participant […]

A few weeks ago, I blogged about the Thermodynamic Computing workshop that took place in Honolulu between January 3-5. Today a new episode of the Catalyzing Computing podcast is available that features an interview with two of the workshop organizers, Tom Conte (Georgia Tech) and Todd Hylton (UC San Diego). In this interview we discuss their reasons for proposing the workshop, what thermodynamic computing is, and the potential impact that thermodynamic computing could have on future technology. I also sit down with workshop participant Christof Teuscher (Portland State University) to discuss his thoughts on the workshop and his work with new models of computation, including computing with DNA. You can stream or download the […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) recently hosted a visioning workshop on Thermodynamic Computing in Honolulu, Hawaii in order to establish a community of like-minded visionaries; craft a statement of research needs; and summarize the current state of understanding within this new area of computing. The premise behind thermodynamic computing is that striving for thermodynamic efficiency is not only highly desirable in hardware components, but may also be used as an embedded capability in the creation of algorithms. Can dissipated heat be used to trigger adaptation/restructuring of (parts of) the functioning hardware, thus allowing hardware to evolve increasingly efficient computing strategies? Recent theoretical developments in non-equilibrium thermodynamics suggest that it drives […]

Graduate students and postdoctoral scholars from institutions in Canada, Europe, Japan and the United States are invited to apply for the seventh International Summer School on HPC Challenges in Computational Sciences, to be held June 26 to July 1, 2016, in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Applications are due Feb. 15. The summer school is sponsored by the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) with funds from the U.S. National Science Foundation, Compute/Calcul Canada, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) and the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (RIKEN AICS). Leading American, European and Japanese computational scientists and HPC technologists will offer instruction on a variety of topics, including: HPC challenges by […]

President Obama has issued an Executive Order establishing the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI), which is an effort to create a cohesive, multi-agency strategic vision, and Federal investment strategy in high-performance computing (HPC). HPC systems, through their high levels of computing power and large amounts of storage capacity, are essential to economic competitiveness, scientific discovery, and national security. The NSCI will ensure that the United States continues leading in this field over the coming decades. As the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology has concluded, high-performance computing “must now assume a broader meaning, encompassing not only flops, but also the ability, for example, to efficiently manipulate vast and rapidly increasing […]