Category: Technology

GFX Cards As A Super Computer?

POP!

Cool! I remember when there was an Internet hoax running around about a dedicated SETI at home crunching card. Everyone was all excited about the idea of pumping out gobs of work units day ana night with them. I wonder if the low cost (video card = cheap, super computer = not cheap) video card could be used to do this. There may be life yet for last years craphics card, you know, the one that it will only display a bazillion textures and a million FPS… 😛

The Scout programming language, developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico, US, lets scientists run complex calculations on a computer’s graphics processing unit (GPU) instead of its central processing unit (CPU).
In tests, the graphics processor was able to perform certain types of calculation 12 times faster than a single CPU.
Graphics processors generate smooth and realistic three-dimensional imagery by performing rapid calculations on visual data. And the latest graphics chips rival CPUs for raw processing power, thanks to consumer demand for hardware powerful enough to support the latest 3D computer games.
“These chips normally sit idle when scientists work,” says Patrick McCormick, a LANL researcher. “They have all this processing power but it’s just not being used.”

Computer graphics card reveals supernova collapse
(Thank you agent Greg for this info)
computers, inventive, science, space

Lego-Tronics

LEGO

I saw this on MAKE today. I used to dream about building this sort of thing. However, due to time and a billion other things I never did.

Using LEGO bricks, soldering nails, various electronic components to build an “Lego Electronic Lab Kit”.

Exactly! a concept so simple and cool that it’s a wonder that LEGO themselves have not already produced the. Ok, if your old enough to remember the Dacta line they had some sensors and such, but nothing like this. Makes me want to get my electronics parts bin out and do some building…

Lego Electronic Lab Kit Main

DIY, science, electronics, lego

I Feel My Mind Going…

Desktop HAL

I found at on Gizmodo tonight:

The face needed to be a black material, so I chose black ¼-inch acrylic, but it couldn’t go flush, so I removed the plastic face of the case and built a ¾-inch-thick square ring to bring the face of the HAL out enough for my drive to be stealthed and to allow for differences in the case. To make the ring light up, I put green LEDs behind it and cut the two face-plate pieces out.

Personaly I think this is bunches better than the first place entry. Star Wars is over rated…

HAL9000–ExtremeTech’s Science Fiction Case Mod Contest
computer, DIY, mod, case

Wheel Life

Wheel Life

Cool, I want to build a hotel out of these. Too bad only smart people could stay there, the dumb ones would end up hurting themselves. Stupid people suck.

TurnOn consists of several revolving modules linked together. Each module’s interior would be outfitted for a specific room or function, such as a kitchen, bedroom, or exercise room. The wheel turns, and as the positioning of the module changes, so does its function. While cooking, the couch becomes the ceiling, the dining table a wall. Another module would house the bathroom, including the toilet, shower, and bath. One would simply rotate the module to utilize one of the facilities.

Living in a wheel

design, home, round, cool

Accelerate Your Macintosh

Edo Mac

If your like me and have never bought a new peice of Apple hardware and because of that your pounding out the very last bit of worth that is left in an upgraded Beige tower G4 (now a G4/500 thank you very much!) this is the place for you. All sorts of info on keeping you ‘old world’ Mac happy and chugging along (with Panther it’s a serious chug!)

Accelerate Your Macintosh!

Apple, Mac, antique, DIY

The Z Machine Gun Shoots Faster Than the Earth

Z Machine

Anything is a good excuse for a story about the Z Machine.

Sandia National Labs has accelerated a small plate from zero to 76,000 mph in less than a second.
The speed of the thrust was a new record for Sandia’s Z Machine — sometimes referred to as the fastest gun in the West. Actually the fastest in the world, it is now able to propel small plates at 34 kilometers a second, faster than the 30 km/sec that Earth travels through space in its orbit about the sun, 50 times faster than a rifle bullet, and three times the velocity needed to escape Earth’s gravitational field.

The immediate purpose of these very rapid flights is to help understand the extreme conditions found within the interiors of the giant planets Saturn and Jupiter, hasten the achievement of virtually unlimited energy through peacetime atomic fusion, and provide more information about the condition of the U.S. nuclear stockpile without having to explode a nuclear weapon.

The Z Machine Gun Shoots Faster Than the Earth

z machine, energy, physics, Sandia, simulation