Web Field Trip
SuperComputers

Computers (& IT) are technologically complex, 
but conceptually simple. 
     -- Main Theme of the Course

In the Hall of the Silicon King

Simon Norfolk, Photo Essay on Supercomputers.
"The supercomputers I'm showing here are powerful almost beyond human understanding," photographer Simon Norfolk explains, describing his extraordinary new images of supercomputers and their architectural settings.

Full text article (303 words) on Simon Norfolk (from New Scientist ).

Rooms of Algebraic Theology, BldgBlogon Simon Norfolk.

Here are the machines that Simon Norfolk documents:
Laser chips may power petaflop computers. Latency measures the time required to accomplish a task, such as the movement of data from one place to another. What performance within a computer can be improved by the technology described in this article?
Related article.

Atomic simulation most intensive computer program ever. The most computationally intensive computer program ever developed has been put to work simulating the quantum behaviour of atoms.  
Related article.

IBM's Blue Gene Remains Tops In Supercomputer Rankings.

TOP500 Supercomputer Sites

Supercomputing for Olympics swimsuit designs

Simon Norfolk's suspicion of the artificial has its historical antecedents: Mentioned in Norfolk's introDUCKtion: the Canard Digérateur or Digesting Duck was an automaton duck created by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1739.

Science historian examines the 18th-century quest for 'artificial life': "The Digesting Duck shows that the 18th century had this in common with our own: there was a strong tension between two opposing ideas -- the idea that life was fundamentally mechanical and the suspicion that some aspects of life were forever beyond technology's reach."

"The Defecating Duck, Or, The Ambiguous Origins of Artificial Life," (PDF, 36 pp.), in Critical Inquiry Summer 2003, Vol. 20, no. 4, 599-633; forthcoming in Bill Brown, ed., Things, (University of Chicago Press). Jessica Riskin, Associate Professor, History, Stanford University.

Brainy Robots Start Stepping Into Daily Life. A half-century after Alan Turing described his "Test for Artificial Intelligence" (1950) , scientists and engineers say they are making rapid progress in simulating the human brain