Issue 145 December 2015/January 2016 CONTENTS Laboratory informatics Brewing up a laboratory sample 4
Even when she’s down the pub drinking beer, Gloria Metrick can’t stop thinking about informatics Life in the cloud
Bridging the language divide
Sophia Ktori continues her profiles of informatics companies by looking at how BSSN is pioneering data standardisation
High-performance computing A quantum leap in processors?
High-performance computing Opens up
Te mood was upbeat at SC15, where Tom Wilkie found the supercomputing industry going Open but also splitting up
China’s Long March continues
Already in the top three supercomputer vendors worldwide, Chinese companies have wider ambitions still, as Tom Wilkie reports
The king is dead, long live the king Applications Rise of the machines The changing face of CAE
Gemma Church talks to engineering simulation company Altair about how Computer Aided Engineering has become mainstream
Is ‘Engineer By Objective’ the future for simulation?
Gemma Church profiles engineering simulation provider Noesis Solutions and how it is transforming designs into benchmark products and getting it right first time
Simulation apps for everyone
Gemma Church talks to simulation soſtware company Comsol about creating modelling applications to further the reach of multiphysics simulation
Resources Suppliers' directory
EDITORIAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE TEAM Editor-in-chief Dr Tom Wilkie
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DECEMBER 2015/JANUARY 2016 3 34 32 26
Gemma Church investigates how simulation soſtware models the equipment used in the oil and gas industry
32 23
Robert Roe finds that upgrading legacy HPC systems is a complicated business, and that some obvious solutions may not be the best
21 14
Adrian Giordani reports on the progress in quantum computing and carbon nanotubes but finds their commercial application still lies some way in the future
18 8
In the first of two articles about informatics soſtware as a service, Sophia Ktori looks at the motivations for transferring to the cloud
12
WINDS OF CHANGE IN SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING
One of the forecast consequences of global climate change, for northern latitudes such as the UK, is an increase in the frequency and severity of storms and flooding – something all too evident in recent weeks. In the context of scientific computing,
weather and climate change immediately prompt thoughts of supercomputers that not only model the long-term trends but also make short-term weather forecasts, allowing emergency services to be deployed in good time. And in this issue, Robert Roe reports on page 23 that one of the constraints on upgrading existing or replacing legacy systems is that some supercomputing centres need to have their machines available all day every day. Te UK Meteorological Office is a case in point – it needs to be able to predict the consequences of weather fronts as quickly as possible. But computing can play other roles in
mitigating the effects of climate change. As Gemma Church records on page 26, the offshore oil industry needs to be able to plan for those storms of increasing frequency and severity. It needs to design offshore structures that can withstand the battering they receive and sometimes computer simulation is the only way in which it can be done. Over the course of this year, Robert Roe has
been reporting on new processor technologies that are making their way into high- performance computing. Tese developments in technology are having a knock-on effect on the structure of the HPC industry itself, as was evident at this year’s US supercomputing conference and exhibition, SC15. On page 18, Tom Wilkie analyses some of these trends and highlights, in particular, the continuing strength and confidence of the Chinese supercomputing vendors, Sugon and Inspur. New developments in technology have their
place in informatics also, and on page 8 Sophia Ktori examines the motivations for companies to move to the cloud. Finally, on page 4, in a slightly seasonal note, Gloria Metrick was in the pub drinking her favourite beer when she began to wonder about the role of laboratory
informatics in a brewery. Tom Wilkie Editor-in-chief
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