Man, russians have "fun" but with no safety measures...
SonicBomb reports:

As a 36 year old researcher at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, Anatoli Bugorski used to work with the largest Soviet particle accelerator, the synchrotron U-70. On July 13, 1978, Bugorski was checking a malfunctioning piece of equipment when an accident occurred due to failed safety mechanisms..

A sub-atomic bullet to the head

Anatoli Bugorski Bugorski was leaning over the piece of equipment when he stuck his head in the part through which the proton beam was running. Reportedly, he saw a flash “brighter than a thousand suns”, but did not feel any pain. The beam measured about 2000 gray when it entered Bugorski’s skull, and about 3000 gray when it exited after colliding with the inside of his head inflicting about five hundred times the presumed lethal dose.

The left half of Bugorski’s face swelled up beyond recognition, and over the next several days started peeling off, showing the path that the proton beam (moving near the speed of light) had burned through parts of his face, his bone, and the brain tissue underneath. As it was believed that about 5 to 6 grays is enough to kill a person, Bugorski was taken to a clinic in Moscow where the doctors could observe his expected demise.

AMD has clawed back some market interest in the server area.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=207607

Shanghai @2,7 to bulldozer anything in virtualization
Shangai @ 2,7 ghz VMmark scores are out, kills any living Intel system out there.

shangai @2,7ghz 2p 8core score : 11,22
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vmma...11-12-R805.pdf

harpertown @ 3,33ghz 2p 8core score : 9,15
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vmma...0-09-ML370.pdf

shangai @2,7ghz 4p 16core score : 20,35
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vmma...11-12-R905.pdf

AMD is still widely used at the top end of the HPC spectrum often due to interconnect performance.

Pumping out a sustained 1.64 quadrillion mathematical calculations per second (1.64 petaflops) after a recent technological overhaul, the Cray XT Jaguar is now the world's latest fastest supercomputer (huge disclaimer coming) for non-classified research. And once you see what's under the hood, you'll know why.

Purdue University has started with a (slightly frustrating) tool to educate young people about clustering and cluster spending resource allocation.

http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/rackanode/

November 7, 2008, 7:10 pm
Supercomputing: The Video Game
By Ashlee Vance

In the vast field of technology, supercomputing stands as one of the least accessible disciplines. It’s an area where borderline wizardry occurs — people harness the power of thousands of machines to simulate nuclear explosions, predict the weather or model chemical reactions.

SMP for the most widespread CELL - the cell phone

http://www.symbian.com/symbianos/os_smp.html

Symmetric Multiprocessing

Today’s phones are becoming increasingly complex; running process heavy applications such as GPS and digital TV, which require more efficient processing to achieve optimum performance without compromising battery life.

This is an interesting take on GPU processing with some of the advantages and pitfalls listed.

http://www.digit-life.com/articles3/video/cuda-1-p1.html

please note it is a 6 page document

Introduction

going forward is looking good!

http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/08/14/intel.2009.1010.leaked.map/

Leaked Intel slides show 8-core CPUs, AVX

Starting to think parallel in the broader software world...

http://www.chipdesignmag.com/domeika/2008/09/19/thoughts-on-the-endstate-of-multicore-software-development/

« TBD: The Perfect Architecture Migration Guide
Thoughts on the endstate of multicore software development

I recently read two interesting articles on multi-core programming from different angles. One is from a noted compiler writer who is a creator of development tools that enable multicore/multiprocessor programming:

My BroadBand has

GLOBAL internet giant Google is being investigated by the Competition Commission for allegedly abusing its dominance by trying to steal a customer away from Cape-based e-marketing company Entelligence.

Entelligence has filed a complaint accusing Google SA of flouting the Competition Act by inducing a customer not to deal with Entelligence but to deal directly with Google instead.

GPU usage is picking up.

Today, at the NVISION 2008 conference, NVIDIA Corporation in conjunction with Pegasys Inc., makers of TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress multi-format video encoding software, showcased a technology demonstration to optimize video processing with the massively parallel architecture of the GPU.