Forem: Marita Thushari

Today’s Supercomputers …

Marita Thushari — Wed, 26 May 2021 13:56:42 +0000

The evolution of computers is basically known by almost everyone who are interested in computers. At the early stages when computers were introduced vacuum tubes, punched cards & such mechanical technologies were used and the computational speed was very low compared to today’s smart phones. As the years passed and technologies were developed at a high rate, the computational power of computers was also increased. Different classes & levels of computers have been built for various purposes. Supercomputers are one of such classes and this article describes the today’s state of Supercomputers.

What is a Supercomputer?

According to the term ‘Supercomputer’, it is defined as the fastest-high-performance system available which is extremely powerful. At the beginning stages, these supercomputers were basically used to satisfy the requirement for solving high-speed computations in scientific & engineering fields.

Some common applications of supercomputers are given below;

Testing complex mathematical models designed for climate & weather, nuclear weapons & reactors, pharmaceutical purposes, cryptography and etc.
Market research purposes & other business-related models.

The computational power of the Supercomputers was measured in ‘Floating-point operations per second (FLOPS)’.

Why so Super?

It holds following features that makes it able to execute multiple processes simultaneously using one system.

A Huge number of processing units (CPUs) starting with several hundreds of thousands to a million.
Uses ‘Capability computing’ technique.
Several terabytes of RAM & memory that is addressable by all processing units.
High-speed interconnection, rapid data & instruction retrieval, and fast input/output capability.
Effective thermal management; processor & memory chips are being immersed in a cryogenic fluid to achieve the low temperature.
Use of ‘Vector Arithmetic’.

Early days…

Supercomputers were initially introduced in the 1960s mainly for the use of national security purposes such as for nuclear weapons design & cryptography. Seymour Cray CDC invented the first supercomputer ‘CDC 6600’ in 1965. Another successful achievement was the introduction of ‘Cray-1’ supercomputer in 1976. As the development of supercomputers increased ‘Cray Research’ held the top ranking of market share in the early days.

Following is an image of the ‘Cray-1’ supercomputer.

Today’s state…

Today’s supercomputers are widely used for various purposes including aerospace, petroleum, automotive industries, weather forecasting and online gaming as well. Various countries such Japan, USA, Germany, Italy, France, China, Saudi-Arabia and India etc. have shown a great improvement in developing supercomputers. At present, the supercomputer ‘Fugaku’ built by ‘Fujitsu’ of Japan is considered to be the world’s most powerful one followed by two other IBM supercomputers.

Below given is an image of the ‘Fugaku’ supercomputer.

And according to today’s market IBM with 44% of share ranks at the top of supercomputer manufacturers followed closely by Hewlett Packard with 28%.

The usage of Supercomputers with the developed AI technologies is currently serving COVID-19 pandemic in a useful way in medical research purposes as well.

The following image states the world’s Top 8 Supercomputers ranked according to the statistics.

Cloud Computing, an Introduction…

Marita Thushari — Sun, 02 May 2021 15:29:38 +0000

In this era of technology everyone tends to search for the best solution or resource for an affordable cost. The concept of Cloud Computing paves the way for this search easily and it has been a great solution for many during this pandemic as well. In this article a brief introduction will be discussed on the concept of Cloud Computing and how it becomes an easy & affordable solution in many situations.

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing is the concept that delivers computing services over the Internet using the ‘Pay-as-you-go’ pricing model, which means payment is done only for the usage of the services provided. Therefore, this is also called ‘Consumption-based model’. Due to this model it becomes typically cheaper when compared to purchasing the required hardware components for computing.

The main services provided by Cloud computing are Computing power and Storage. There are other services provided such as Networking, Database management, etc. These cloud services are provided by various Cloud Service providers and the users who are called the Cloud tenants pay for the services they use.

Features…

Cloud Computing holds various advantages such as Reliability & High availability as it is accessible from multiple devices across the globe, Scalability as resources can be increased to cater the demand accordingly, Elasticity as resources can be allocated and deallocated for users, Agility, Geo distribution as devices that are distributed across the globe are connected with each other which also provides Fault Tolerance and Disaster recovery.

Cost savings is one of the major advantage due to the ability of paying only for the service used which also means that there is no Capital cost needed. High speed and Ability to deploy more new services easily than when using them on-premises are also some other available advantages.

The disadvantages are that complexity may be increased when migrating the data & apps that are already existing to cloud platforms and Internet connectivity is required to use & access the cloud services.

Cloud Service Models…

The main Cloud Service models are Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS).

IaaS - Produces the computer infrastructure (hardware components) as the cloud service, Cloud tenant should be responsible for OS maintenance and Network configurations. Eg: Virtual Machines

PaaS - Produces the platforms required for applications as the cloud service by managing the hosting environment, Cloud tenant is only required to deploy their applications. Eg: Azure App Services

SaaS - Manages all aspects of the application environment therefore Cloud tenant only needs to provide the required data that is to be processed or stored. Eg: Office 365 from Microsoft, Google Drive

Cloud Deployment Models…

The main Cloud deployment models are Public cloud, Private cloud and Hybrid cloud. The describe on how the cloud services are provided and used by the users.

Public cloud – Cloud services are provided to anyone over the public Internet.

Private cloud – Cloud services are exclusively used by users of a business or an organization.

Hybrid cloud – Builds a connectivity between the Public and Private clouds allowing the data to be shared between them.

How can the Cloud Services can be accessed?

There are many Cloud Service providers at present and there can be more in the near future as well. These Cloud Service Providers provide many services that can be used by anyone through internet. Some of the main Cloud Service providers are AWS from Amazon, Microsoft Azure from Microsoft, Google Cloud from Google and many more. Each of these solutions have their own unique and common characteristics in their available cloud services. And the costs related to each service can also differ among the various service providers. Therefore, it would be easy for anyone to practice these solutions first and then select the most suitable one for their implementation purposes. Most of these Cloud Service providers provide a free trial for this purpose.

For more details about Microsoft Azure click on
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/

For more details about AWS click on
https://aws.amazon.com/

For more details about Google Cloud click on
https://cloud.google.com/

Due to the above existing features of Cloud computing, it is obvious to consider that most of the next-gen businesses will be built on this platform.

Quantum Computing: Explanation and its Evolution.

Marita Thushari — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 14:44:29 +0000

This article is written with the intension of providing a brief understanding on Quantum Computing. This is because it is one of the main topics that is currently being evolved at a high rate and it is considered as the future of the field of Computing.

Explanation

Quantum Computing is one of the main fields that use the Quantum theory. In the study of physics, the term Quantum means “the minimum amount of any physical property involved in an interaction”. Quantum theory is basically a discussion about the particles that are in atomic and subatomic levels and it was first presented by physicist Max Plank in 1900.

Quantum Computing is a field that uses the principles of Quantum theory for computational purposes. This uses Qubits instead of bits. Qubits (or Quantum bits) which is the fundamental unit of Quantum Information that can also have a state that would be a linear combination of 0 and 1. Due to the use of qubits, Quantum computing is more advance than the classical computing.

Below figure shows an explanation of the difference between a Classical bit and a Qubit.

The 3 main Quantum Properties that are used in Quantum Computing are,

Superposition
Refers to the combination of two states which are independent to each other and is used to explain the quantum state of a qubit.
Entanglement
Refers to the ability of a quantum state of each particle in a set of particles that are generated, interacting or sharing the same space not being able to be described independent of each other. This is because the quantum state of the quantum particles depends on each other.
Interference
Ability of a phase of a quantum state being changed due an interference of another state.

Using these Quantum properties, Quantum Computers were designed to do the Quantum computations. These computers use the quantum states to manipulate all possible solutions for a given problem. As qubits must be kept cold to work with them for very long time periods, Quantum Computers are designed in a way such that they can perform at temperatures near absolute zero. ‘Dilution refrigerator’ that is built inside these computers creates a suitable environment for the qubits.

Below figures depict the internal & external structure of a Dilution refrigerator.

Evolution

There can be many motivations for the scientists to develop the concept of ‘Quantum Computing’ which led to the creation of ‘Quantum Computers’. One of the main motivations is that to carry out the "Double Slip Experiment" that explains the principle of quantum superposition. It was observed that the photon which is a quantum particle can be in 2 states at the same time in this experiment. Therefore, a Quantum Computer was considered to be needed to carry out this experiment. Another motivation for the development of Quantum computing is the “Shor’s Algorithm” for large numbers because it required a very long time to factor a very large number into its primes.

The history of Quantum computing starts from the 1920s and can be explained as follows,

1927 - Introduction of ‘Uncertainty Principle’ by German physicist Werner Heisenberg.
1970 - The term ‘Quantum Information Theory’ was mentioned & the idea to join quantum mechanics and quantum information theory was also raised.
1981 - Suggestion of Richard Feynman to develop a computer based on quantum physics.
1994 - Peter Shor’s Factoring Algorithm is considered as the first quantum algorithm.
1995 - Theory of Quantum Error Correction is introduced by several groups including IBM.
1996 - ‘DiVincenzo Criteria’, the 5 basic requirements for creating a quantum computer was suggested.
1997 - Prof. Alexei Kitaev of California Institute of Technology proposes the first ‘Topological quantum error correcting code’ known as the ‘Surface code’ which is considered as the base of the ‘Fault-tolerance quantum computer’.
2001 - The first real quantum computing experiment was done to demonstrate the Shor’s algorithm.
2004 - Circuit QED was invented by Robert Schoelkopf and his collaborators at Yale University.
2007 - A Superconducting Qubit that has reduced sensitivity to charge noise was invented by Robert Schoelkopf and his collaborators.

This was followed by several other improvements in the next years.

In 2017 March IBM introduced the commercially available universal quantum computing systems called ‘IBM quantum systems’. And in 2019 they launched the first integrated quantum computing system for commercial use called ‘IBM Q System One’.

Quantum computing is still being developed so that it could assist in many fields to improve their efficiencies by several companies including IBM, D-Wave, Google, HP, Intel, & Microsoft.

Below is given an image of the IBM Q System One.

Quantum Computing can be applied in various fields to increase the efficiency in those respective fields. Some of them are Quantum Simulation in Medical Science field for drug research and Quantum Cryptography to provide quantum-ready encryption. Several other fields such as Industry, Business, Technology, Health sectors can also be optimized.

Main advantages of Quantum Computing are high storage space, faster execution of tasks than classical computers and ability to increase the efficiency level of the fields it is applied in. It also has some disadvantages such as having a very high cost and having a risk of being able to perform according to their wish against human laws. Therefore, it is required to develop security precautions to provide protection against this risk.

Quantum Computing is the next level of futuristic computing which is being developed and we should be able to understand its functionalities in order to work in parallel with it.

Diyazen – Sri Lanka’s First Humanoid Robot

Marita Thushari — Wed, 02 Dec 2020 13:32:07 +0000

In this technologized world, we have heard and seen the rise of the Robotic Era in many foreign countries. Now Sri Lanka has also stepped into the list as Arimac, Sri Lanka’s Digital Solutions Provider has taken an initiation on bringing a machine to life in 2019. Not just a machine but a machine with a human touch, Diyazen, a Humanoid Robot. This is the first humanoid robot in Sri Lanka and in that way as Sri Lankans we are proud to say that we have taken a great step in the world of technology.

How did it all begin?

The original idea on the construction of a humanoid robot by Arimac was first revealed at Google I/O Extended held in 2018. The main factor that drove this idea into action is that the Sanbot’s robots which were in use in Sri Lanka through the partnership between Arimac and Sanbot Robotics didn’t fulfill all the requirements. Thus Diyazen was given birth into this world by the Sri Lankans in 2020.

Diyazen, a brief description.

Diyazen is an ultra-modern virtual assistant that includes many abilities derived from the Arimac Cognitive Platform. The abilities include natural language processing and dialogue management, and these can be modified according to the purpose. Therefore, it is developed so that it could satisfy different user specific requirements.

Features Included.

Technological Features that are included in the robot are OIMA that operates with intelligence & transmits signals in all directions, CNN based High-speed Semantic Analysis Technology to analyze & understand data faster & efficiently, intel® Realsense Depth camera that is specialized for augmented reality applications, content creation, & object scanning with high accuracy, intel® Apollo Lake Mobile SOC for improved battery saving, memory, graphics performance & I/O capacity, PIR, IR sensor array to sense motion in surroundings using heat, 3D SLAM Indoor Positioning & Navigation for real time & accurate 3D navigations. It also has a 10.1” 10 point LED touch display and Smart battery featuring Automatic charging.

Diyazen can be extended into multiple robot applications due to its’ Modular humanoid robot platform. It’s 3D dynamic perception enables face, gesture and emotion identification, Application SDK enables third party app developments. It also possesses an operating time of 10 hours.

What’s so special ?

Diyazen gives an experience of interacting with a machine that is more human because of the use of modern technologies such as AI, Advanced Robotics and it has a normal human height of 4.5 feet.

The important design that adds color to the humanoid robot is that it is designed in a way that it inherits the Sri Lankan history by designing the face based on the Raksha masks.

Most importantly, it is a Sri Lankan development which is very much special for us as Sri Lankans.