Big Ideas. Simplified.
Join the OrionX team and guests in lively discussions of Big Ideas in Tech, covering trends and products that can impact your investment decisions and change the technology options you consider.
HPC, AI
Join Shahin Khan and Doug Black, insideHPC’s editor-in-chief, in their weekly discussion of key technology trends that drive high performance computing and artificial intelligence.
Podcasts
@HPCpodcast-52: AI iPhone Moment, Virtual Quantum, Silicon Photonics
In what might become a regular segment, we cover important advances in tech that signal changes in markets and policies. This time, we discuss the iPhone moment in AI and the ensuing AI gold rush, virtual quantum computers, and how silicon photonics can change the chip industry.
@HPCpodcast-51: Bob Coecke on Quantum in Pictures (Book)
In the The Messenger Lectures in 1964 at MIT, Richard Feynman said “On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. … Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‘But how can it be like that?’ because you will get ‘down the drain’, into a blind alley from which nobody has escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.”
Why is that? And can the teaching and understanding of Quantum Mechanics be simplified without loss of accuracy or mathematical rigor? For the answer, you have come to the right podcast!
Bob Coecke, co-author with Stefano Gogioso of the recently-released book Quantum in Pictures: A New Way to Understand the Quantum World joins us to discuss why quantum mechanics is so hard, the inspirations behind the book, and how he’s working to make quantum computing more accessible through his work.
Bob is Chief Scientist at Quantinuum, Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Emeritus Fellow at Wolfson College Oxford. For the previous two decades, he was Professor of Quantum Foundations, Logics and Structures at the Department of Computer Science at Oxford University, where he co-founded and led a multi-disciplinary Quantum Group that grew to 50 members and supervised close to 70 PhD students. He pioneered Categorical Quantum Mechanics, ZX-calculus, DisCoCat natural language meaning, mathematical foundations for resource theories, Quantum Natural Language Processing, and DisCoCirc natural language meaning. His work has been headlined by various media outlets, including Forbes, New Scientist, PhysicsWorld, ComputerWeekly. He’s also a musician and painter.
@HPCpodcast-50: Quantum, AI Chatbots, IBM Cloud’s AI Supercomputer
The latest news in Quantum Computing, as well as Google’s response to ChatGPT, Bard, IBM cloud’s new AI supercomputer, which also leads to a discussion of IBM.
OrionX Download Podcast: Crypto Winter, SBT, CBDC
The crypto winter arrived but a lot continues to happen in the cryptocurrency industry. Stephen and Shahin cover the current state of things, from some of the causes of significant failures, to Bitcoin’s recent rise, new developments in Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC), and self-sovereign identity (SSI) and Soul-Bound Tokens (SBT).
@HPCpodcast-49: 12 Myths & Legends with Satoshi Matsuoka and Torsten Hoefler
So many great ideas in tech but how do you assess them scientifically? In “Myths and Legends in High-Performance Computing“, Satoshi Matsuoka, Jens Domke, Mohamed Wahib, Aleksandr Drozd, and Torsten Hoefler tackle 12 important topics, from major technology areas to specific capabilities in future HPC systems, to application performance. They help formulate the right questions, and instigate the important discussions, by posing the topics as myths and legends in an enjoyable and humorous paper. Also check out InsideHPC’s coverage of the article: “Conventional Wisdom Watch: Matsuoka & Co. Take on 12 Myths of HPC.” We caught up with Prof. Matsuoka and Hoefler, one in an airport, to discuss the paper and some of the major topics. Really fun and insightful.
@HPCpodcast-48: Handel Jones on China and the AI Race
Join us for an insightful discussion with Dr. Handel Jones, author of the recent book When AI Rules the World: China, the U.S., and the Race to Control a Smart Planet, and CEO of International Business Strategies, Inc. Subjects covered include where the United States stands compared to China in advanced technologies, trade wars, chip fabrication economics and capacity, battery technologies, demographics, Taiwan, rare earths, Covid, and what the future might hold.
@HPCpodcast-47: New Chips from Intel, 2023 Predictions, AI
In the first episode of 2023, Shahin and Doug discuss the recent chip announcements and their implications for HPC. Also covered are industry predictions for the year to come that were featured in the InsideHPC article, An AI-Flavored Set of HPC Predictions for 2023, AI for public use, and a promise to invite Prof. Matsuoka to discuss his recent paper on common myths in HPC.
@HPCpodcast-46: Year in Review 2022
In this year-in-review double-issue episode, we continue what is becoming a tradition, covering some of the notable topics of the past year including: HPC market growth, China, exascale and future of supercomputing, quantum tech, SC22, AI, ACM Turing Award, interconnects, the Nvidia-Arm deal, the Chips and Science Act, HPC software, and fusion energy.
@HPCpodcast-45: Quantum Networking, Sensing, Computing at Brookhaven National Lab
Kerstin Kleese van Dam, Gabriella Carini, and Meifing Lin of Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) join Shahin and Doug to discuss all things Quantum, covering Quantum Sensing, Quantum Networking, and Quantum Computing. We also get a glimpse of BNL and its global leadership across a wide range of research that it conducts.
@HPCpodcast-53: Warfare as Product Development, Intel Roadmap
When soldiers are software engineers a new warfare emerges. Modern warfare is similar to, and needs, high tech product development with fast cycles and incremental improvement. The new Technopolitics section starts with the role of software engineers enlisted in the Ukrain war. Next is the House Committee on Science Space and Technology hearing on “US, China, and the Fight for Global Leadership: Building a U.S. National Science and Technology Strategy”. New and substantial funding (£800m) for the UK Exascale program promises to bring the UK into the exascale world by 2046. (This was subsequently complemented by another £2.5B for quantum technologies.) Under the HPC-AI section of the podcast, we discuss the recent changes to the Intel high-end GPU roadmap and lament the lost opportunity to communicate that better.