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Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Tim Berners Lee

Tim Berners Lee invented the Web in some sense, as we know. In this recent Wired article, that is expanded on a bit in the context of courtroom testimony. He is also on the record as saying that perhaps World Wide Web wasn't the best name since the structure of the web is really that of a graph, so the acronym GGG (Giant Global Graph) might be more appropriate. Here's his blog post originating that idea. A graph (also called a network sometimes), is a mathematical model that fits lots of the digital aspects of our lives we take for granted: online friendships, the web itself, viral videos, and on and on...

Here is the Internet shown as a graph:
and here is Facebook

Monday, February 13, 2012

Nasa has unplugged its last mainframe. That's one picture of the direction computing has been headed the last 30 years, but mainframes still exist to server other needs more closely related to enterprise-level data processing. Don't worry, though, NASA still has some big computer clusters.
Two slashdotted articles in a row related to I101 this section: the shift to IP is freeing up real estate for old companies like AT&T, and the importance of supercomputers to weather prediction has been highlighted.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Here's a cheesy video that describes how the Internet's backbone made of TCP/IP works:

A timely Wired article describes the importance of API's to the Web. Every wonder how websites all over the place let you share things on FaceBook recently?

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Cyberinfrastructure

Cyberinfrastructure has become a buzzword for the infrastructure needed for sophisticated information systems. A recent article that got slashdotted describes one aspect of the infrastructure for a Facebook data center: the power. The data center in Oregon uses half the total power of the county, and expanding it involves working with the power company to add additional capacity to their power grid. Why would the power company put up with that? Because the economic value to the local economy is tens of millions of dollars? In terms of Facebook's value, they are rumored to be filing for an IPO today.


The world's fastest computer are listed in the Top 500. These information systems are at the cutting edge of high performance computing (HPC). The current shape that HPC has taken is a direct consequence of Moore's Law and the basic physics that things heat up faster at higher frequencies. As components on a chip get closer together every 18-24 months, they also used to be running faster. By running faster, they heat up more, but if they're too close together, all that heat doesn't have anywhere to escape to in time. So CPUs don't really get faster any more. One of the future entries at or near the top in the top 500 is not too far from here: Blue Waters is finally getting installed at NCSA in Illinois.