Computer Science

The cloud versus E. coli

When biologists needed to quickly analyze strains suspected in the E. coli outbreak still reverberating through Europe, the Department of Energy’s… Read More

July 5, 2011

Passing it on

Computing’s rapid evolution demands equally fast changes in software. Users want programs that run on any machine, from a laptop… Read More

June 14, 2011

Scaling up for security

Part of the Science at the Exascale series. When someone mentions national security and computation, the phrase “war games” probably… Read More

May 5, 2011

One-sided story

As high-performance computers bring more power to programmers, communication often limits an operation’s overall speed. Even a seemingly simple computing… Read More

August 27, 2009

Annotated and automated

University of Illinois computer scientist William Gropp is an expert at making code run fast. When it comes to tools… Read More

June 30, 2009

Consistently inconsistent

Bert Debusschere digs around in some messy stuff. He looks for ways to understand chemical and biochemical reactions that are… Read More

April 24, 2009

Lightweight heavyweight

As an avid hockey player for most of his life, Arthur Bernard “Barney” Maccabe recognizes the vital role of speed… Read More

March 20, 2009

Moving mounds of data

If bytes were pennies and you stacked them, they would go from Jupiter to the sun and back, by the… Read More

February 12, 2009

More than a bit faster

Imagine trying to find someone in a New York City telephone book if the names were listed randomly. Scientific databases… Read More

December 23, 2008

Quiet, please

A doorbell’s chime, a telephone’s ring, a teapot’s scream: Momentary interruptions that jar the mind are the bane of deep… Read More

November 18, 2008