David Keyes is a professor of applied mathematics and computational science and director of the Extreme Computing Research Center at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia.

Having data and having insights are two very different things. To transform data into information that can actually help drive better decisions and scientific breakthroughs is a proactive task. So what are the steps data scientists recommend to turn that stagnant data lake into a sparkling flow of insights? "Step back from the data questions; the infrastructure questions; all of these technical questions that can seem very challenging to navigate," said Arti Garg (pictured), head of AI solutions and technologies at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. "And first ask: What problems am I trying to solve? It's really no different than any other type of decision you might make in an organization."

One thing is certain: The explosion of data creation in our society will continue as far as pundits and anyone else can forecast. In response, there is an insatiable demand for more advanced high performance computing to make this data useful. The IT industry has been pushing to new levels of high-end computing performance; this is the dawn of the exascale era of computing. Recent announcements from the US Department of Energy for exascale computers represent the starting point for a new generation of computing advances. This is critical for the advancement of any number of use cases such as understanding the interactions underlying the science of weather, sub-atomic structures, genomics, physics, rapidly emerging artificial intelligence applications, and other important scientific fields.

Expect an enhanced workforce dedicated to AI safety, big steps in reaching what's known as "general" intelligence, and more of the same (i.e. Unlike other emerging technologies, AI never seems to go away. It's perpetually talked about, studied, revered, and feared. It's going to give robots sentience! And they're going to take over the human race!

C-DAC and Atos have signed up for a partnership on the technology advancement in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Exascale Computing, and Quantum Computing. Atos is a global leader in the digital transformation with around 12000 employees in more than 70 countries. The company offers end-to-end Orchestrated Hybrid Cloud, Big Data, Business Applications, and Digital Workplace solutions. C-DAC which developed India first supercomputer which is known by the name as PARAM will work together with the Atos in a long-term program on exascale computing. According to the announcement, Atos and the said collaboration has delivered the world's highest-performing commercially available quantum simulator called Atos' Quantum Learning Machine.

C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), a national premier R&D organization under Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, and Atos1, a global leader in digital transformation, today announce that they have signed a Cooperation Agreement for technology advancement in the areas of Quantum Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Exascale Computing. Dr Hemant Darbari, Founder Member and Director General, C-DAC, India is spearheading the C-DAC Mission Mode Programs on Exascale Computing, Microprocessor and Quantum Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Computing of national importance. In addition to delivering an Atos' Quantum Learning Machine, the world's highest-performing commercially available quantum simulator, this partnership encompasses the creation of a'Quantum Computing Experience Center' at C-DAC's headquarters in Pune. It aims to bring together users from academic, scientific, research and industry to rapidly acquire skills and develop further expertise in the field of quantum computing with the support from the Government of India. This center will enable advance study of applications of quantum theory, thereby creating new technologies and platforms for information security, connectivity and computing.

C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), a national premier R&D organization under Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, and Atos1, a global leader in digital transformation, today announce that they have signed a Cooperation Agreement for technology advancement in the areas of Quantum Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Exascale Computing. Dr Hemant Darbari, Founder Member and Director General, C-DAC, India is spearheading the C-DAC Mission Mode Programs on Exascale Computing, Microprocessor and Quantum Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Computing of national importance. In addition to delivering an Atos' Quantum Learning Machine, the world's highest-performing commercially available quantum simulator, this partnership encompasses the creation of a'Quantum Computing Experience Center' at C-DAC's headquarters in Pune. It aims to bring together users from academic, scientific, research and industry to rapidly acquire skills and develop further expertise in the field of quantum computing with the support from the Government of India. This center will enable advance study of applications of quantum theory, thereby creating new technologies and platforms for information security, connectivity and computing.

Though nearly seventy percent of Earth's surface is comprised of water, only three percent is considered fresh and drinkable--and most of that striking minority is trapped in glaciers or polar ice caps. Juxtapose the dearth of natural drinking water with the disquieting realization that nearly a billion people still lack unfettered access to clean water, and the world's oceans suddenly look a lot smaller. This global quandary has led to the ambitious goal of making oceans drinkable--but doing so is going to require a ton of innovation and processing power. Let's take a look at how the next generation of supercomputers might help solve our water challenges and more. Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory believe the answer lies in carbon nanotubes (and a whole lot more, but let's start here for now).

The latest Top500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers turns the spotlight on China, which overtook the United States in the total number of ranked systems and which scored the top two fastest installations on the list. Rather than target systems that test well on the Top500's distributed-memory version of the Linpack benchmarks (High Performance Linpack), the companies aim to render those measurements irrelevant on their way to beating China to exascale computing. China captured not only first and second place in the ranking of the fastest installed systems, but also won the majority share of ranked installations and took the aggregate performance lead, according to the November 2017 Top500 list, which was the 50th one to be published since the ranking debuted in June 1993. According to the Top500 organization, "There is no system from the USA under the Top3. The number of systems installed in China increased to a new record high of 202, compared to 160 on the last list. China now clearly shows a substantially larger number of installations than the USA. China now is also pulling ahead of the USA in the performance category, with China holding 35.4% of the overall installed performance, while the USA is second, with 29.6%."

Exascale computing promises to bring significant changes to both the high-performance computing space and eventually enterprise datacenter infrastructures. The systems, which are being developed in multiple countries around the globe, promise 50 times the performance of current 20 petaflop-capable systems that are now among the fastest in the world, and that bring corresponding improvements in such areas as energy efficiency and physical footprint. The systems need to be powerful run the increasingly complex applications being used by engineers and scientists, but they can't be so expensive to acquire or run that only a handful of organizations can use them. At the same time, the emergence of high-level data analytics and machine learning is forcing some changes in the exascale efforts in the United States, changes that play a role in everything from the software stacks that are being developed for the systems to the competition with Chinese companies that also are aggressively pursuing exascale computing. During a talk last week at the OpenFabrics Workshop in Austin, Texas, Al Geist, from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and CTO of the Exascale Computing Project (ECP), outlined the work the ECP is doing to develop exascale-capable systems within the next few years.