ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Sandia National Laboratories has issued three information technology contracts totaling $353 million over a potential term of seven years. The awards streamline IT contracting at the labs. “These contracts replace current IT contracts that are expiring,” said Chris Slater of the Sandia Procurement group. “We are integrating multiple service contracts to create [...]
Category Archives: Computing
Sandia researcher looks for bad guys in cyberspace
February 11, 2013 – 10:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The weakest link in many computer networks is a gullible human. With that in mind, Sandia National Laboratories computer science researcher Jeremy Wendt wants to figure out how to recognize potential targets of nefarious emails and put them on their guard. His goal is to reduce the number of visitors that cyberanalysts [...]
Four technology transfer awards go to Sandia Labs
October 22, 2012 – 10:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Sandia National Laboratories has won four awards from the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) for Sandia’s efforts to develop and commercialize innovative technologies. The FLC’s Far West/Mid-Continent regional awards recognized Sandia’s technology transfer work with crystalline silico-titanates (CSTs), biomimetic membranes, the i-Gate Innovation Hub and DAKOTA software. “It is always gratifying when the [...]
Sandia Labs benchmark helps wind industry measure success
October 4, 2012 – 1:00 pm
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Sandia National Laboratories published the second annual 2012 Wind Plant Reliability Benchmark on Monday, and the results should help the nation’s growing wind industry benchmark its performance, understand vulnerabilities and enhance productivity. Until now, wind farm owners and operators had no way to compare their output with the output of similar operations. [...]
Sandia builds self-contained, Android-based network to study cyber disruptions and help secure hand-held devices
October 2, 2012 – 7:00 am
LIVERMORE, Calif. — As part of ongoing research to help prevent and mitigate disruptions to computer networks on the Internet, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in California have turned their attention to smartphones and other hand-held computing devices. Sandia cyber researchers linked together 300,000 virtual hand-held computing devices running the Android operating system so they [...]
Sandia experts, students explore cyber issues during weeklong summer institute
August 24, 2012 – 5:00 am
LIVERMORE, Calif.— Top graduate students pursuing careers in cybersecurity worked alongside Sandia and other prominent cybersecurity experts in a weeklong summer institute sponsored by Sandia National Laboratories at the Livermore Valley Open Campus. Cyber Security Technology, Policy, Law, and Planning for an Uncertain Future, which followed last year’s institute on energy technology and policy, focused [...]
Fiery research: Sandia computers model rocket fuel fires
July 31, 2012 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Walt Gill of Sandia National Laboratories’ Fire & Aerosol Sciences Department calls it a pancake — a disk more than a foot in diameter covered with what looks like the debris you’d scrape off a particularly messy barbecue grill. It’s actually a crunchy, baked-on mixture of aluminum, aluminum oxide, carbon and other [...]
Predictions by climate models are flawed, says invited speaker at Sandia
July 25, 2012 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen, a global warming skeptic, told about 70 Sandia researchers in June that too much is being made of climate change by researchers seeking government funding. He said their data and their methods did not support their claims. “Despite concerns over the last decades with the [...]
Global warming unequivocal in its advance, says invited speaker at Sandia
July 24, 2012 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Global warming is unequivocal in its advance and will lead to more record-setting temperatures, said Warren M. Washington, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in the seventh lecture of Sandia National Laboratories’ Climate Change and National Security series. The talk was given in mid-May. Washington, a pioneer in atmospheric [...]
Sandia Red Storm supercomputer exits world stage
June 26, 2012 – 9:27 am
From helping destroy an errant satellite to aiding a foundering computer company, forerunner machine was without peer ALBUQERQUE, N.M. — A celebration at Sandia’s Computer Science Research Institute in mid-May wrote finis to Red Storm, the Sandia-designed and Cray Inc.-built supercomputer, one of the most influential machines of its era, with 124 descendants at 70 [...]
Graph500 adds new measurement of supercomputing performance
June 25, 2012 – 8:45 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Supercomputing performance is getting a new measurement with the Graph500 executive committee’s announcement of specifications for a more representative way to rate the large-scale data analytics at the heart of high-performance computing. An international team that includes Sandia National Laboratories announced the single-source shortest-path specification to assess computing performance on Tuesday at [...]
Sandia wins four R&D 100 Awards
June 20, 2012 – 12:14 pm
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories researchers — competing in an international pool of universities, corporations and government labs — captured four prestigious R&D 100 Awards in this year’s contest. R&D Magazine presents the awards each year to researchers whom its editors and independent judging panels determine have developed the year’s 100 most outstanding advances in [...]
Cyber research facility opens at Sandia’s California site
June 12, 2012 – 9:00 am
LIVERMORE, Calif. — Sandia National Laboratories’ new Cybersecurity Technologies Research Laboratory (CTRL) now offers an open yet controlled area for cybersecurity professionals from the Bay Area and across the country to meet and discuss critical cyber research issues. A grand opening for the facility, which resides on the grounds of the Livermore Valley Open Campus [...]
New model of geological strata may aid oil extraction, water recovery and Earth history studies
May 23, 2012 – 5:00 am
‘Largest known chemical wave’ caused previously unrecognized effects, said Sandia researcher ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A Sandia modeling study contradicts a long-held belief of geologists that pore sizes and chemical compositions are uniform throughout a given strata, which are horizontal slices of sedimentary rock. By understanding the variety of pore sizes and spatial patterns in strata, geologists [...]
Navy pilot training enhanced by AEMASE ‘smart machine’ developed at Sandia Labs
May 16, 2012 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Navy pilots and other flight specialists soon will have a new “smart machine” installed in training simulators that learns from expert instructors to more efficiently train their students. Sandia National Laboratories’ Automated Expert Modeling & Student Evaluation (AEMASE, pronounced “amaze”) is being provided to the Navy as a component of flight simulators. [...]
Sandia scientists named 2012 SIAM applied mathematics fellows
May 8, 2012 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, NM — Sandia National Laboratories researchers Bruce Hendrickson and Pavel Bochev have been named Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). Hendrickson and Bochev were among 35 members selected for fellow status this year, and are the first Sandia scientists to earn the honor from the 4-year-old fellowship program. SIAM is [...]
Sandia experiments may force revision of astrophysical models of the universe
March 15, 2012 – 9:10 am
Ice giant planets have more water volume than believed ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The idea of compressing water is foreign to our daily experience. Nevertheless, an accurate estimate of water’s shrinking volume under the huge gravitational pressures of large planets is essential to astrophysicists trying to model the evolution of the universe. They need to assume [...]
Cybersecurity technology, policy, law and planning to be focus of Sandia Labs summer institute for top grad students
March 1, 2012 – 5:00 am
LIVERMORE, Calif. — Graduate students pursuing careers related to cybersecurity, including specialties in computer science, engineering, law, public policy, economics and social sciences, are being encouraged to apply for Cyber Security Technology, Policy, Law and Planning for an Uncertain Future, a weeklong summer institute at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, Calif. The program will take [...]
Sandia cyber project looks to help IT professionals with complex Domain Name System (DNS) vulnerabilities
January 11, 2012 – 5:00 am
LIVERMORE, Calif. — Sandia National Laboratories computer scientist Casey Deccio has developed a visualization tool known as DNSViz to help network administrators within the federal government and global IT community better understand Domain Name System Security (DNSSEC) and to help them troubleshoot problems. (Click here to see a short video of Deccio discussing the DNSViz tool.) [...]
Rankings released for supercomputers doing “big data”
November 15, 2011 – 3:07 pm
Graph500 competition grows larger ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.—The list of supercomputers entered in the Graph500 competition now features 50 competitors, up from nine in its initial release a year ago, said Sandia National Laboratories researcher Richard Murphy, chair of the Graph500 steering committee. New rankings were released Tuesday in Seattle at SC2011, the international conference for high-performance [...]
Cyber workshop at Sandia Labs seeks potential responses to cyberattacks
October 25, 2011 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Among other dubious achievements, hackers have stolen identities, broken into bank accounts and breached computer systems of military contractors. They could conceivably interrupt water or electricity service to targeted populations. And worse. To solve these problems, Sandia National Laboratories has plans to increase cybersecurity research over the coming year through a new [...]
New tool allows first responders to visualize post-event disaster environments
August 17, 2011 – 5:00 am
Sandia, DHS modeling/simulation software debuted at national-level disaster exercise LIVERMORE, Calif. — Using iPad™ mobile devices, emergency preparedness officials and first responders participating in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Level Exercise 2011 (NLE-11) were able, for the first time, to make use of a new, science-based software tool that allows them to view and modify [...]
Sandia’s “Cooler” technology offers fundamental breakthrough in heat transfer for microelectronics, other cooling applications
July 7, 2011 – 12:18 pm
Licensing opportunities now available LIVERMORE, Calif. — Sandia National Laboratories has developed a new technology with the potential to dramatically alter the air-cooling landscape in computing and microelectronics, and lab officials are now seeking licensees in the electronics chip cooling field to license and commercialize the device. The “Sandia Cooler,” also known as the “Air [...]
Sandia and Cray Inc. to tackle “big data” in new supercomputing institute
May 27, 2011 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories and supercomputer manufacturer Cray Inc. are forming an institute focused on data-intensive supercomputers. The Supercomputing Institute for Learning and Knowledge Systems (SILKS), to be located at Sandia in Albuquerque, will take advantage of the strengths of Sandia and Cray by making software and hardware resources available to researchers who [...]
LAMMPS supercomputer code developer earns special recognition
March 3, 2011 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories researcher Steve Plimpton, who led development of a widely used computer code that models how materials behave, has been invited to present a keynote lecture at the Feb. 27-March 3 Minerals, Materials & Materials Society (TMS) meeting in San Diego. Plimpton developed the LAMMPS molecular-dynamics software code. The acronym [...]
Tamara Kolda accepts high-performance-computing editorship of key journal
January 26, 2011 – 5:00 am
LIVERMORE, Calif. — Tamara Kolda has accepted a section editorship of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics’ Journal on Scientific Computing [SIAM SISC], overseeing the portion reserved for high-performance computing and software. “The journal just formed this section due to increased interest in computing,” Kolda said. “I was excited to be asked to serve [...]
Sandia researcher Mike Heroux named editor-in-chief of key software journal
January 26, 2011 – 4:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia researcher Mike Heroux has been named editor-in-chief of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) journal Transactions on Mathematical Software. The quarterly publication, published by ACM, has been rated among the top 20 journals for its “impact factor” — roughly, the number of times its articles are cited by others. Heroux has [...]
Sandia researchers awarded more than 65 million supercomputing simulation hours by DOE INCITE program
December 9, 2010 – 11:23 am
LIVERMORE, Calif. — Two projects led by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories’ Combustion Research Facility (CRF) and Computer Sciences and Information Systems Center have been awarded 65 million hours on two Department of Energy (DOE) supercomputers through the DOE’s Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program. The research projects utilize two [...]
Tougher rating system evaluates nine supercomputer capabilities
November 18, 2010 – 11:42 am
Results released at Supercomputing Conference 2010 ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Nine supercomputers have been tested, validated and ranked by the new “Graph500” challenge, first introduced this week by an international team led by Sandia National Laboratories. The list of submitters and the order of their finish was released Nov. 17 at the supercomputing conference SC10 meeting [...]
New standard proposed for supercomputing
November 15, 2010 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A new supercomputer rating system will be released by an international team led by Sandia National Laboratories at the Supercomputing Conference 2010 in New Orleans on Nov. 17. The rating system, Graph500, tests supercomputers for their skill in analyzing large, graph-based structures that link the huge numbers of data points present in biological, [...]
Sandia computational researchers awarded $2.6 million in grants from DOE Office of Science
October 27, 2010 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Four Sandia researchers have been awarded three-year grants totalling $2.6 million from the Department of Energy’s Office of Science to pursue computational research proposals that would help create an exascale computer. An exascale computer would be 1,000 times faster than a petascale computer, the fastest now available, which operates at a quadrillion [...]
Red Sky/Mesa wins Oracle green award
September 22, 2010 – 1:39 pm
Sandia/NREL’s Top 10 supercomputer also tops in energy efficiency ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Red Sky/Red Mesa, listed by Top500 Supercomputer Sites as the 10th fastest computer in the world, has been selected as one of the 15 winners of Oracle’s Enable the Eco-Enterprise award. “Red Sky/Red Mesa is the most eco-transparent (energy efficient) compute platform Sandia [...]
DARPA selects Sandia National Laboratories to design new supercomputer prototype
August 17, 2010 – 2:00 pm
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories has been selected as one of four institutions to develop new supercomputer prototype systems for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). To meet the increasing advanced computing needs for the Department of Defense (DoD), DARPA launched the Ubiquitous High Performance Computing (UHPC) program. The goal of the UHPC [...]
Groundbreaking Sandia study ties climate uncertainties to economies of US states
July 21, 2010 – 10:59 am
California, Pacific Northwest and Colorado achieve positive net impacts; other states languish ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A climate-change study at Sandia National Laboratories that models the near-term effects of declining rainfall in each of the 48 U.S. continental states makes clear the economic toll that could occur unless an appropriate amount of initial investment — a [...]
Breaking the logjam: improving data download from outer space
May 18, 2010 – 6:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Satellite systems in space keyed to detect nuclear events and environmental gasses currently face a kind of data logjam because their increasingly powerful sensors produce more information than their available bandwidth can easily transmit. Experiments conducted by Sandia National Laboratories at the International Space Station preliminarily indicate that the problem could be [...]
Sandia wins 2 national technology transfer awards for work with Cray, Stirling Energy Systems
April 28, 2010 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories has won two national Federal Laboratory Consortium awards for its efforts to transfer technology to supercomputer manufacturer Cray Inc. and solar energy supplier Stirling Energy Systems, Inc. The Federal Laboratory Consortium plans to present the Excellence in Technology Transfer Awards in Albuquerque at its national meeting this week. The consortium [...]
Defense-scale supercomputing comes to alternative energy research
April 26, 2010 – 5:00 am
Albuquerque, N.M. — A new supercomputer that more quickly models the most efficient ways to harness energy from the sun, wind and other renewable resources is now operating at Sandia National Laboratories. Red Mesa, a 180-teraflop computing platform, is a collaboration between Sandia and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The two labs dedicated the [...]
Sandia to break ground for new computational laboratories building
March 22, 2010 – 9:14 am
LIVERMORE, Calif. — A groundbreaking ceremony for a new facility – the Combustion Research Computation and Visualization (CRCV) building, part of the Combustion Research Facility (CRF) – will take place at 2 p.m., Wednesday, March 24, on the grounds of Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore. The Department of Energy’s Office of Science (SC) and Office [...]
National Security Computing Center open for business
February 25, 2010 – 1:44 pm
Red Storm becomes a DOE asset for national security projects ALBUQUERQUE, NM — Sandia National Laboratories’ Red Storm high-performance computer will get broader use to help solve the nation’s most pressing national challenges now that it has been designated part of a Department of Energy user facility. Red Storm is the primary computer in the [...]
Sandia researchers awarded 73 million supercomputing simulation hours by DOE INCITE program
February 23, 2010 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Three computationally based projects proposed by Sandia National Laboratories researchers have been awarded 73 million of 1.6 billion supercomputing processor hours offered by the Department of Energy’s INCITE program to advance cutting-edge work. Another Sandia researcher is participating in a Los Alamos National Laboratory-led proposal that was granted 25 million hours. Not [...]
Supercomputer flexibility increased by virtualized operating system
January 20, 2010 – 8:16 am
Progress on opening up supercomputers to a broader range of applications and users ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Supercomputers have sprung up across the world landscape like the statues on Easter Island — separate, huge, and impenetrable to the average person. They perform hundreds of trillion calculations per second, a figure almost ungraspable by a species that [...]
Sandia computer scientists successfully boot one million Linux kernels as virtual machines
July 28, 2009 – 2:07 am
Sandia National Laboratories computer scientists Ron Minnich (foreground) and Don Rudish (background) have successfully run more than a million Linux kernels as virtual machines, an achievement that will allow cybersecurity researchers to more effectively observe behavior found in malicious botnets. They utilized Sandia’s powerful Thunderbird supercomputing cluster for the demonstration. (Photo by Randy Wong) Download [...]
More chip cores can mean slower supercomputing, Sandia simulation shows
January 12, 2009 – 12:00 am
16 multicores perform barely as well as two for complex applications THE MULTICORE DILEMMA: more cores on a single chip don’t necessarily mean faster clock speeds, a Sandia simulation has determined. (Photo by Randy Montoya) Download 553 KB JPEG image (Media are welcome to download/publish this image with related news stories.) ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The [...]