Addison Snell and Michael Feldman discuss the week's top HPC stories.

An article published this week in MIT Technology Review ponders the fate of the computing industry after Moores Law. The law is actually an observation made in 1965 by Intel cofounder Gordon Moore that transistors were shrinking with each iteration of semiconductor technology, doubling in density every year -- later modified to every 18 months, then to every two years.

The Genomic Analysis Centre (TGAC) has deployed what SGI says are the two largest UV 300 supercomputers in the world used for life sciences applications. The systems will be used to analyze genomic data, and in particular wheat genomes, for the bioscience research community.

By Michael Feldman, Managing Editor; Fujitsu is building what will be Japans floppiest supercomputer to date. On Tuesday, the company announced it received an order from the University of Tokyo and the University of Tsukuba for a 25 petaflop system, which will be used for scientific research and engineering. The supercomputer will be housed at the Joint Center for Advanced High-Performance Computing (JCAHPC) and is scheduled to be operational in December 2016.

Machine learning is all the rage these days at hyperscale companies, which are using them to drive key applications like search, image recognition, and language translation. Mostly these companies keep such proprietary technology under wraps, but occasionally the unwashed masses get a glimpse of the kind of software that is shaping their online lives.

IBM Watson, Big Blue’s iconic AI-style supercomputing system, has made its way to the Korean Peninsula. Under an agreement with SK Holdings C&C Ltd., a South Korean IT services company, IBM will offer Watson’s cognitive computing capabilities for native applications in the country. SK Holdings C&C will be the preferred distributor for these services.

Deep learning has reinvigorated research in machine learning and inspired a gold rush of technology innovation in a variety of fields and across a wide range of markets ranging from Internet search, to social media, to real-time robotics, self-driving vehicles, drones and more.

FRANKFURT, Germany; May 10 – The ISC Group, promoter of the TOP500 list, is pleased to announce the appointment of high performance computing (HPC) industry journalist Michael Feldman to the position of managing editor of TOP500 News. In his new role, Feldman will expand the TOP500 project’s information portal into a comprehensive news site reporting on the HPC industry.

Addison Snell and Michael Feldman analyze China's exascale roadmap and the news of Green 500 merging with TOP500.

FRANKFURT, Germany; BERKELEY, California; BLACKSBURG, Virginia; May 6 –  The ISC Group, promoter of the TOP500 list, is pleased to announce that the Green500 will be integrated with the TOP500 project as of today, hence streamlining all future submissions to be based on joint power submission rules. The integration follows nearly a decade of collaboration and several years of discussions between the two projects as well as with the Energy-Efficient High-Performance Computing (EE HPC) Working Group.