Author: Mehmet Yildiz

What made QPACE suddenly so popular!

Have you heard about QPACE which is a German engineered supercomputer?

It is almost a paradigm shift for a mass of energy hungry machines: from an environmental friendliness perspective!

QPACE was recognised as the most energy efficient supercomputer in the world. This recognition was given to it at the 2009 Supercomputing Conference in Portland, Oregon, USA.

What else is special about QPACE? It was developed by an academic consortium of universities and research centers as well as the German IBM research and development center in Böblingen within the framework of a state-sponsored research association. It has best of both academic, corporate and government power. In fact the QPACE core team consists of 20 researchers and developers.

I decided to blog about QPACE for two key reasons.

The first reasons is until recently, performance of supercomputers was solely associated with speed. Very little or no focus was on the energy efficiency. Supercomputers consume super amount of energy which make them environmentally unfriendly. Why do they produce so much energy? Because of the processing power! For example, each of the QPACE installations in Jülich and Wuppertal can reach a maximum performance of 100 TeraFlops (double precision). That equates to 100 trillion (100,000,000,000,000) computing operations per second.

The second reason is relating it to my blog category which is schreIBMaschine. How does it relate to schreIBMaschine? It directly relates because the heart of QPACE is the IBM PowerXCell 8i processor, an enhancement of the Cell/B.E. processor, which originally was developed by Sony, Toshiba and IBM for the Sony PlayStation 3. This means a lot of smart brains worked on this innovative piece of machine which may have serious impact on our lives.

You can download a full text free scientific paper about QPACE published in a conference by Peking University, Beijing, China from this link.

Kudos on QPACE team!

Over to you now…
What do you expect from Supercomputers from functionality and operational perspective?
How can supercomputers help us improve our lives?

Regards,
Dr. Mehmet Yildiz

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As recommended at Julich site, more information about this initiative could be obtained from:
Prof. Dr. Tilo Wettig
University of Regensburg
Institute for Theoretical Physics
Tel.: +49 (0)941 943-2004
Tilo.Wettig@physik.uni-regensburg.de

Importance of a central user generated content validation system

Currently I am finalising an accepted research proposal paper about user generated content to be presented in the 6th International Technology Conference to be held in Berlin, Germany in January 2010. In this paper (co-authored with Associated Professor Tuncay Ercan from Yasar University in Turkey) we identified interesting issues and a number of emerged opportunities too.

In this post I’d like to highlight one key finding related to the user generated content. It is validation of user generated content by other users. Through our joint research initiative, we found that peer recognition is an important validation technique for user generate content. However, more important aspect is having an online tool to facilitate this process efficiently and timely manner with minimum effort by the user. We evaluated a number of tools and developed a model to be introduced to the body of knowledge in the scientific journal arm of the conference.

Why am I highlighting this point here?

It is because Yasni is one of the key tools which we found an efficient and effective way of centralised validation tool for user generated content in various networks and sites. I will provide more information on this once the paper is published publicly. This is only a heads up for this important finding. In this blog I will highlight one sample test.

One of the tests for this paper we conducted was asking search engines like google about my personally generated content captured by the search engines. Then I was able to link them to Yasni very easily. I usually have content in Ecademy, Linkedin, Naymz, Superfan, Twitter, and many other online sites. It has been very easy to link my published content to Yasni; just a simple search command and accepting found content objects. Then, the user accepted content become available and open to members of Yasni to validate the content as credible. Of course, there is subjectivity in this rating like anything else in cyberspace but it is still better than having unrated materials. It is indicative and produce a number of intangible benefits. For example, this rating system has some by products such as creating a spirit of networking amongst the members and awareness of user generated content by a larger group of people which also may lead to business contacts and global business opportunities.

I am wondering whether this blog will be captured by search engine will reach Yasni’s credibility rating systems. Yes, even though it is an automated system, as a user of Yasni, I have some responsibility to take care of my own content. Like any other content management system in the world, Yasni also does not do spoon feeding!

How do you find Yasni’s user content credibility feature?

Regards,
Dr. Mehmet Yildiz

Feeling good with new beginnings

Greetings from Melbourne, Australia (a.k.a. Downunder).

This is my first blog on Yasni.

Blogging is a fascinating experience. I am feeling good. Because all beginnings in life make me feel excited and full of energy to embrace the world around me. Each meaningful connection is like an object of happiness and joy in the online world.

I have been blogging in a number of sites such as Ecademy, Superfan, Blogspot, WordPress, Twitter for personal matters and internally in IBM as an employee about technical matters mainly in computing and information technology and a number of close academic and scientific networks for professional and research matters. Now you may ask, after blogging a number of sites, why would choose blogging in Yasni?

Good question! Yasni is a unique site from a number of perspectives. I was introduced Yasni by a co-networker who is well connected and producing excellent results in social networks through his authentic interaction. He is from Germany whom I met face to face so we established reasonable trust for collaboration. This insightful person provided me a number of compelling reasons to join Yasni. One of the key reasons he provided me was about credibility of content rated by peers from any part of the globe. Even though it sounds simple, it has important positive implications and high impact as far as user generated content phenomena. The beauty of Yasni for me was its implementation of metaphorical German engineering rigor from process perspective yet embracing diversity with a vision of globalisation.

After meeting a number of co-networkers here, I was offered to blog in Yasni which is a privilege to me. I am a person with eclectic taste, open mind and thirsty to knowledge which you may notice from my blogs in Ecademy or the blogs which I will be posting here regularly.

In each blog, I ask question related to the theme of the day. As it is about feeling good and new beginnings, I would like to obtain your views on these theme as well. For example, what key things make you feel good in life? What are the new beginnings which you experienced recently? How do they feel? And yes, why are you in Yasni? What is your compelling reason? Who was your catalyst to be a member here?

As an introductory conclusion of my blog today, I’d like to thank the Yasni team for giving me the opportunity to blog here. I am honoured and feel grateful with this jest. Look forward to your comments; I know they will fix my serotonin level by putting smiles on my face stemming from constructive contribution…Let’s feel good together with mutual insights!

Regards,
Dr. Mehmet Yildiz