“Life without social media.”

Social media has become an inseparable part of everyone’s life. Almost all of us are present on the different social media apps. It is very difficult to imagine our life without it, as you get many gains from it.

Social media entertains you, helps you to communicate with people, keeps you well informed and also helps to increase your business. But, there is also a negative side to it. So today, we will focus on the harmful side of social media and discuss how our life without it would be?

● Social media takes us away from our dear ones. Absence of social media in our life would help us to realize the value of people who are close to us in our real-life. In this scenario, we would start spending more time with our friends and family, interact with them and have fun with them.

● When we are on social media, we are very engaged in different activities of various social media apps that we sometimes find it difficult to complete the vital tasks in our life. Cutting off from social media will help you to focus entirely on your work and not get virtually distracted, thus helping you to achieve success in your work.

● When you start living your life without social media, you become very confident about yourself, your work and your personality. This is because you start living independently from other people’s opinions and views regarding your lifestyle. You are least affected by what people have to say about your life choices. This helps to boost your confidence and self-belief.

● Social media can sometimes really be mentally tiring, frustrating and stressful. It does entertain you in many ways, but it also sometimes spreads negativity around you by influencing you about certain things. Life without social media would be a much happier place to live, as you will not be exposed to any kind of negativity and you can thus create a positive atmosphere around you.

● Living without social media can help you to discover yourself. You will find more time for yourself and you can utilize this time wisely to work on your betterment so as to bring an improvement in yourself. You become a much better and stronger person as you find ways to get out of your difficulties and not depending on others to help you. You become your own friend and start enjoying your own company.

● Spending time on social media also sometimes proves to be beneficial in your professional work. But, taking a breather from it can help you to invest your time in some really good productive hobbies. These hobbies like painting, dancing, reading, writing, gardening, etc. will give you immense pleasure. They come with many mental as well as physical benefits and have almost no side effects.

● When you don’t have access to social media, you try finding innovative ways to entertain yourself. One such new way of spending your time in the absence of social media would be by living close to mother nature. By staying in close proximity to the wonderful creations of nature, you get a wonderful opportunity to relax your mind, become joyful, feel refreshed and surprise yourself with the amazing beauty of nature.

Thus, we get to see that there are many beneficial things which we fail to look at, due to social media. Hence, each one of us shall try to take a break from the virtual world and live in the real world happily and peacefully.

The bride herself is a dowry.

The dowry system in India is the worst system that exist here in this the bride family gives cash,goods or movable property to the bridegroom , his family as a condition of the marriage.This system was followed in India since ancient times but now as if it is leading to issues and problems in society.Now parents of bridegroom are looking a bride as a source of income which is totally disgusting.Poor parents who started hating their daughters because they don’t have money to give dowry and nobody is ready to get married to their daughters.They have to take ‘Marriage loans’ to get their daughters married.Dowry is becoming a nightmare for women.The cases of infanticide are increasing poor parents could not afford a girl child and hence they are killing infant girls.Gandhi ji said “Any young man,who makes dowry a condition to marriage,discredit his education and his country and dishonours womanhood”.So it very clear that dowry is creating violence in society it is a complete injustice with women and it creates negative impact in society.

NUCLEAR HAZARD

The discharge of warm water into a river is usually called a thermal pollution. It occurs when an industry removes water from a source, uses the water for cooling purposes and then returns the heated water to
its source. Power plants heat water to convert it into steam, to drive the turbines that generate electricity. For
efficient functioning of the steam turbines, the steam is condensed into water after it leaves the turbines. This
condensation is done by aking water from a water body to absorb the heat. This heated water, which is at least 15oC higher than the normal is discharged back into the water body

EFFECTS:- The warmer temperature decreases the solubility of oxygen and
increases the metabolism of fish. This changes the ecological balance of the river. Within certain limits thermal additions can promote the growth of
certain fish and the fish catch may be high in the vicinity of a power plant.
However sudden changes in temperature caused by periodic plant shutdowns both planned and unintentional can change result in death of these fish that are acclimatized to living in warmer waters. Tropical marine animals are generally unable to withstand a temperature increase of 2 to 30C and
most sponges, mollusks and crustaceans are eliminated at temperatures above 370C. This results in a change in tthe diversity of fauna as only those species that can live in warmer water survive

CONTROL MEASURES:-Thermal pollution can be controlled by passing the heated water through a cooling pond or a cooling tower after it leaves the condenser. The heat is dissipated into the air and the water can then be
discharged into the river or pumped back to the plant for reuse as cooling water.There are several ways in which thermal pollution can be reduced. One method is to construct a large shallow pond. Hot water is pumped into one end of the pond and
cooler water is removed from the other end. The heat gets dissipated from the pond into the atmosphere. A
second method is to use a cooling tower. These structures take up less land area than the ponds. Here
most of the heat transfer occurs through evaporation Here warm waters coming from the condenser is
sprayed downward over vertical sheets or baffles where the water flows in thin films. Cool air enters
the tower through the water inlet that encircles the base of the tower and rises upwards causing evaporative
cooling. A natural draft is maintained because of the density difference between the cool air outside and the warmer air inside the tower. The waste heat is dissipated into the atmosphere about 100 m above the base of the tower. The cooled water is collected at the floor of the tower and recycled back to the power plant condensers. The disadvantage in both
these methods is however that large amounts of water are lost by evaporation.

World Hindi Day

This day is celebrated every year on January 10. It’s objective is to create a suitable environment for the promotion of Hindi language worldwide and to present it as the prevalent language of the World.

Origin of Hindi

The word Hindi is believed to be transformed from the original Sanskrit word ‘Sindhu’. There was a river called Sindh and the area around this river was known as Sindh. This ‘Sindhu’ word became ‘Hindu’ when Irsnian’s entered in India. Later, it became ‘Hindi’ and then called ‘Hind’. Today this language is spoken by about 43 crore people in the world. It is believed that Hindi has derived from Sanskrit and written in the Devanagari script.

About World Hindi Day

  • The first World Hindi Conference was held in Nagpur on January 10, 1975, where 122 delegates from 30 countries participated in the program.
  • Former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh announced to celebrate World Hindi Day on January 10 every year in the year 2006.
  • It is also celebrated by Indian embassies located in various parts of the world.
  • Hindi is the fifth most spoken language among the total languages of the world.
  • It is spoken in countries like Pakistan, Nepal, New Zealand, Mauritius, South Africa.
  • World Hindi Day is different from Hindi Divas which is celebrated on September 14 every year.

Source – Jagranjosh and Wikipedia

Rip saroj mam💔

Noted choreographer Saroj Khan was hospitalised after she complained of breathing trouble. The 71-year-old has been admitted in Guru Nanak Hospital, Bandra, since Saturday.

Veteran choreographer Saroj Khan passes away of cardiac arrest. Saroj Khan was hospitalized due to breathing problems on June 20. She had tested negative for Covid-19.

How do dirty business tactics work??!!

Since time immemorial, the functioning impetus of every business venture has been to sell a series of services and material commodities for the purposes of attaining several consistent revenue yields – which are subsequently translated into profits with the deduction of all production & delivery expenses (overheads). Modernity, with its systematic consolidation of free market capitalism as the allegedly ‘best’ mode of economic administration and distribution, only sought to entrench this fundamental commercial principle further within the lives of ordinary people – a trend that may be analyzed in full through a Spectrum Packages Internet subscription.

But the post-enlightenment societal reformations (with the bulk of these advances accrued inside the initially Eurocentric western world, and subsequently exported from there to the east) also brought with them their fair share of deplorable business practices – many of which continue to be implemented within official circles to this day.

These include such deplorable practices as:

  • Price monopolization/fixing & dumping (once regularly engaged in by the Chinese),
  • The sale of illicit health substances in the black market (for instantaneous profits),
  • Arms manufacture and civilian ‘gun enfranchisement’ (an issue of particular concern inside the U.S),
  • Account auditing discrepancies (to hide certain revenue streams through the employment of misleading statistics/reports),
  • Outright instances of commercial blackmail (which are oftentimes pursued in elaborate public lawsuits once uncovered).

All businesses aim to grow both vertically (inside their own industrial niches) as well as horizontally (traversing through other product/service domains), in an effort to become the dominant commercial players within their targeted consumer populations.

Based on this consideration, and on account of the difficulty that is oftentimes experienced when trying to expand one’s commercial interests by adhering strictly to legal & standardized norms of procedure, it is not hard to understand why some key organizational officials (including a certain faction of the venerated ‘higher ups’ who operate from behind the curtain) may choose to resort to such inglorious practices from time to time.

In order to catch business officials red-handed in the act of carrying out a dirty business tactic, it first becomes important to understand how they operate. Every industrial setting has its own working dynamics. These can be exploited in a number of ingenious ways by individuals who have no qualms about compromising on their integrity for a quick dollar. It is sometimes argued, in both lay and professional management circles, that all people tend to eventually find an unspoken work-ease balance in their careers. According to this self-adopted working agreement, they only bother to satisfy their everyday working requirements – so everything looks good on paper.

Every business is interested in gaining as large a share of the consumer marketplace as possible. With that said, few are eager to launch a product that definitively cancels the need for making any further purchases. For this reason, many companies manufacture their products with intrinsic hardware ‘glitches’. These willful flaws cause them to become redundant and obsolete after a certain period of time has elapsed. This timeframe, furthermore, usually corresponds with the launch of a newer model of the same product line. Apple’s example is sufficient to illustrate this point in a real-world context. The recent launch of the company’s wildly popular iPhone 11 and X devices was accompanied by widespread reports of the noticeably reduced battery times of older iPhone models.

Similar to the shady tactic discussed above, this strategy sees companies making product manufacturing decisions that make them prone to repairs work after a certain time-period elapses. In addition to introducing noticeable hardware defects in this manner, the same commercial entities attempt to dissuade third-party repairers (through both legal & informal coercive measures) from carrying out remedial work on their malfunctioning products. It need not be said that many companies, including Apple, have been repeatedly found to be involved in this conscious malpractice.

Refrences:-

https://www.boredpanda.com

Do curfews really help adolescents out of trouble!!!

A curfew should, in theory, reduce juvenile crime rates. After all, if a teenager is kept at home, what can go wrong? This has been noticed that teens with no curfew were committing crimes late at night or early morning such as 1 or 2 a.m. Are the parents at home worrying about them or is it they do not give their teens a curfew which could “help” keep them out of trouble? Teens having curfews is a good idea but at the same time, an unreasonable curfew can lead kids to believe their parents do not trust them and they may even try to sneak out of the house. In this case, parents don’t know where their teens are, when they’ll be home, who they are with or if they are in trouble.

Setting a curfew can be good but instead of the curfew being set at exactly 11 pm, it would be better to set a curfew between 10:30 – 11:00 pm especially if the teen is driving. This gives them some lenient time to get home so they do not risk getting a speeding ticket or worse, into an accident. We know that teens sometimes wait until the last minute to leave to go home. Teens may require a little extra time if roads conditions are bad, need to drive others home, or stop for gas so the car is not empty for our parents the next morning, etc. There are many reasons for delays.

Most teens have cell phones today, and if a teen is going to be late, they should call their parents and inform them instead of rushing. This is just common courtesy and shows respect. Even parents call each other or their teen if they are going to be late picking them up or getting home. If a teen does call to say they are running late, the parent should not over react or become too angry or next time your teen might try to rush home and might not ever make it home. How would you feel then?

A curfew develops values within a teen. It instills responsibility and awareness amongst teenagers. If a teenage values the curfew law that means he/she understands the importance of it and its effect on society. The curfew law is enforced to keep teenager’s parents out of court arguing and saving money from the wrongdoing of their child. Studies show that 93% of cities that currently enforce a curfew law believe it is effective. The law also helps out cops because they are less apt to worry about children participating in troublesome late night events in the case that their parents are not strict and do not abide by their own curfew laws. Curfews are heavily effective within cities and states that value them. The law is a progressive sign in society that keeps teenagers out of trouble and is for the betterment of their life.

Over the past decade, juvenile crimes have been on the rise in many regions around the world. These have been attributed to an increase in drug abuse, media influences and negative peer pressure among the youth. As such, laws have been enacted to deter the youth from getting into trouble. In addition, parents have been advised to set curfews in order to restrict their children’s activities during certain hours of the day and night. Arguably, curfews help in the reduction of juvenile crime and victimization. However, opponents of this fact argue that curfews deny teenagers their civil rights.

In as much as curfews may not seem effective in deterring juvenile delinquency, they have played a pivotal role in fostering responsibility, respect for boundaries and effective time management among the youth. They ensure that teenagers understand what is expected of them and the consequences of noncompliance to those expectations.

Similarly, parents have obligations to ensure the safety and health of their children. However, they cannot monitor and supervise their children’s activities every hour of the day. Setting curfews gives parents an opportunity to establish a trusting relationship with their children. As a result, parents are able to know where their children are, with whom and at what time to expect them back home. Despite what the teenagers do with their free time, implementation of curfews lessens their likelihood of getting into trouble. This is because they are afraid of the repercussions associated with breaking the curfew. In the long-run, curfews play a significant role in deterring teenagers from getting into trouble. Simply put; the benefits of curfews as a deterrent mechanism far outweigh the costs.

Curfews make a significant impact on teenagers’ behaviors. They help parents to monitor their children’s activities and minimize the likelihood of teenagers getting into trouble. While some may argue that curfews are ineffective in the prevention of juvenile delinquency, there is supporting evidence that indicate otherwise.

Refrences:-

http://www.scmp.com

“Different Types Of Tests Used To Detect Coronavirus”

Every day we are interacting with a surging number of cases across the country, every day we add another significant number of digits in confirmed cases, Active cases and total deaths and tolls are growing in each segment with a huge margin. today means ( on 02 July 2020 ) we have significant Number of Covid-19 reported cases that are terrifying increasing every minute rapidly Confirmed cases are (607416) Total Deaths are (17880) and Active Cases are (228410) Country had reached more then half a million cases and tolls are growing day by day. In this Scenario of helplessness where we can only witness the increasing tolls there is a big challenge for the Health Ministry to conducted tests all across the country or where the situations are worse or the possibility of vulnerability is high, and with this one of the most important parameter is to choose the type of test. There are a lot of discussions going on regarding the reliability of the test, cost of the test.

What kind of test one should prefer? What is the Reliability of the Test?

Picking the test is an important criterion or choosing between risk and safety. You are infected by Coronavirus or not how would you know it? Definitely, your body will respond to your symptoms will tell the story but conformity will be determined by a ‘Right test’. Undergoing a reliable authentic and preferred test is very crucial because it is the only test that determines the are you positive or negative hence choosing a test is a question of choosing life and death. There are criteria, parameters, and factors that categorized the kind of tests. Mainly there are three types of tests available or carried out to detect the presence of coronavirus or determines whether a person is tested positive or negative, they are Anti-Body test, RT-PCR test, and ICMR test.

Anti-Body Test: Antibody tests are also known as a serological test, they are carried out on a large scale throughout the country because of cheap availability. An antibody test is carried out to detect the presence of coronavirus by quantifying the number of Antibodies produced within the body. this test does not detect directly the presence of coronavirus a conclusion regarding the infection is measured by quantity of antibodies produced by immune system. Blood samples are taken and used to determine the number of antibodies released. this test is carried out to detect the presence of Immunoglobulin M and G. but overall this test is not reliable, it has not that preciseness and competence to detect the presence of coronavirus hence it is not reliable and data produced on the basis of Antibody test is not up to the mark.

RT-PCR TEST: According to a statement by the Health Ministry of India RT-PCR, the Real-Time reverse transcription-polymerase chain is a gold standard frontline test that can detect the presence of Coronavirus or whether a person is positive or not. this method of testing involves taking a Nasal / throat swab from the infected one, and from this sample RNA ribonucleic acid is extracted which is also the genetic code of Coronavirus patter of the genetic code obtained from RNA of the sample taken from the patient is undergone for matching if Pattern Of genetic code of patient match with the pattern of coronavirus Patient announced to be Positive or infected from Coronavirus. this method of testing is more reliable accurate, but this method requires machines for extracting RNA, skilled Lab technicians, chemicals, and best experts who can carry this test with preciseness, and all this makes this test expensive it costs about 4500 Rupees per test. Overall RT-PCR test is a reliable and accurate test for the detection of coronavirus.

ICMR TEST : This involves usage of the tests discussed above Antibody test and RT-PCR test both. According to the availability consumption and Number of infected Patients.

KASHMIR

Location

Kashmir is the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term “Kashmir” denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal Range. Modern usage of the term encompasses a larger area that includes the Indian-administered territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, the Pakistani-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and Chinese-administered territories of Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract.

History

In the first half of the first millennium, the Kashmir region became an important centre of Hinduism and later of Buddhism; later still, in the ninth century, Kashmir Shaivism arose. In 1339, Shah Mir became the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir, inaugurating the Salatin-i-Kashmir or Shah Mir dynasty. Kashmir was part of the Mughal Empire from 1586 to 1751, and thereafter, until 1820, of the Afghan Durrani Empire. That year, the Sikhs, under Ranjit Singh, annexed Kashmir. In 1846, after the Sikh defeat in the First Anglo-Sikh War, and upon the purchase of the region from the British under the Treaty of Amritsar, the Raja of Jammu, Gulab Singh, became the new ruler of Kashmir. The rule of his descendants, under the paramountcy (or tutelage) of the British Crown, lasted until the partition of India in 1947, when the former princely state of the British Indian Empire became the subject of the Kashmir conflict. The modern region is administered by three countries: India, Pakistan, and China.

How to go

By air: To fly into Kashmir, take the Srinagar Airport (15 km away), which is well connected to prime Indian cities. Air India, GoAir, IndiGo and Jet Airways operate regular flights for Delhi, Goa, Jammu, Leh Mumbai and Bangalore. After reaching the airport, visitors can hire taxis to reach various cities and towns of Kashmir.

By train: Jammu Tawi Railway Station, situated at a distance of about 330 km, is the nearest railhead serving the beautiful valley of Kashmir. New Delhi-Jammu Tawi Rajdhani Express, Jammu Mail and Jammu Tawi Express are some of the prominent trains operating from Delhi. From outside the railway station, one can hire private taxis or take state or private buses to reach various places in Kashmir.

By road: The state of Kashmir is well connected by a network of state and private buses with several nearby cities and towns. National Highway 1-A connects Srinagar with Jammu. Also, the popular Jawahar Tunnel connecting Jammu with the valley of Kashmir also falls on the way. A number of J&K State Road Transport Corporation (JKSRTC), luxury and private deluxe buses ply frequently to and from state. These buses are extremely comfy and cost-effective.

Tourist Places

Srinagar: Srinagar is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and famous places to visit in Kashmir as well as in India. From boating to trekking, bird watching to water skiing, Srinagar place has it all. Locally this place is known as the mirror to the mountains, Srinagar is a first stopover for every traveler and there is a long list of places to visit in Srinagar, Kashmir. The largest city of Kashmir, this place is enclosed by the green mountains and the main highlight being the Dal Lake which is the gem of the city. This place gives a close outlook to the Kashmiri cuisine and the state’s culture.

Gulmarg: Famously known as the ‘Meadow of Flowers’, Gulmarg is a treat to the eyes with its spread of vibrant flowers against snow capped mountains as backgrounds. Gulmarg is considered to be one of the best places to visit in Kashmir for all right reasons. This region of Kashmir is also known as the adventurer’s paradise because of its vast options of skiing in the snow while enjoying the views around. The best time to visit Kashmir for snowfall is in winter season i.e. December-January.

Sonamarg: Sonamarg, as the name suggests, is famous as the ‘Meadow of Gold’. An endless stream of stunning flowers and undulated trekking routes are its attractions. Sonamarg has to be in every visitors’ list of places to visit in Kashmir for its mesmerizing aura and breathtaking views. The best season to visit Kashmir would be in summer i.e. May-June when the valley is blooming with variegated flowers.

Leh: Leh is one of the best and safe places to visit in Kashmir in summers. The lofty mountains, the alpine lakes, and the quaint settings enable Leh one of the best places to visit. This place is every biker’s dreamland. Clad in the beauty and love of nature, Leh offers breathtaking views, leaving no visitor disappointed. You must explore all the top places to visit in Leh when traveling to Kashmir.

Kupwara: Kupwara is a small district located in the state of Jammu and Kashmir and situated at a distance of 90 kilometres from the state capital, Srinagar. Blessed with nature’s finest views, the thriving meadows, alpine mountains, and the gushing clear water make Kupwara a must-visit destination in Kashmir. This city epitomizes the beauty of Kashmir.

Why should you visit Kashmir?

Breathtaking landscapes: There would be not a single person on this planet who doesn’t love nature. We all admire nature, but no one sees it in chaotic cities. Kashmir has everything including mountains, dense forests, green meadows, grasslands, and water streams that together create wonderful scenery. From Aru Valley to Saffron fields, Zabarwan Mountain range to the Chashme Shahi, Badam Vari to Apple Garden, Almond trees to Chinar Tress, all these naturally beautiful locations make Kashmir a Heaven on Earth. Gulmarg, Pahalgam & Sonmarg are some such marvelous locations that everyone loves to visit repeatedly.

Wonderful climate: Plan your trip to Kashmir in the scorching heat of summers when the temperature rises up to 40 degrees. Kashmir is cool even in the harshest of summer and you can visit this valley between March and May to see the blooming flowers, green meadows, and Chinar trees. Overall you can experience the new phase of spring in the Valley of Kashmir. If you plan your trip in Winter Season then you will enjoy beautiful snowfall that would be an incredible experience. The snow-capped mountains fill the region with exquisite surroundings and the snow-capped trees look awesome while offering a serene feeling to everyone. Also, you can enjoy the most stunning views of sunrise and sunset at Dal Lake in Srinagar.

Pristine Lakes: Your Kashmir trip is not complete without taking a ride of Dal Lake and these lakes are the perfect reason to plan a Kashmir trip. It is one of the favorite destinations for the tourists where shutterbugs also love to capture the exquisite scenes. The houseboats and Shikaras are the most famous attraction of Dal Lake. Here, you can see the floating markets and gardens with the sweet smell of flowers and various other attractions. Apart from this, Wular Lake is also popular as the largest freshwater lake in Asia, Mansbal Lake is home to many aquatic birds and surrounded by lush greenery and mountains. Nagin Lake offers the utmost tranquil space to enjoy the serenity. The list doesn’t end here; the waterholes like Gadsar, Gangabal, Tso Moririm, Pangong and Mansar are the greatest attractions for the visitors. The different waterholes provide a perfect landscape in the state of Jammu & Kashmir.

Trekking points: Enclosed by the Great Himalaya and Pir Panjal mountain range, Kashmir Valley is the best place for camping, trekking, and mountaineering. While traveling to this gorgeous land, you will witness the most enchanting views of mountains, lakes, and meadows. Walking through the foothills, Kashmir Great Lakes Trek is popular among tourists where you will cover the lakes of Gangabal, Kishansar and Vishansar that are close to the Harnukh Peak. Aru-Valley, Kolahoi Glacier Trek and Yousmarg Trek are yet another challenge for trekkers. Kashmir is one of the best places for trekkers where fun is boundless.

Art and heritage: You can explore the past events and lifestyle of ancient Kashmiri people in the museums that hold the glory of the rich culture and heritage of the state. These museums include items like paintings, copper utensils, shawls, handicrafts, pottery, stones, arms, and metal substances that stand as proof of the rich sculptural execution of Kashmir. Some of the museums of Kashmir were palaces in old times, which got converted. You can see here some art galleries having old clothes and even a library with old books. Some famous museums of Jammu & Kashmir are Amar Mahal, Dogra Art, Sri Pratap Singh, Kanchenjunga, and Stok Palace Museum where you can check out amazing paintings, old utensils, books, musical instruments, and textiles.

EXASCALE COMPUTING

What is Exascale computing?

The speed of a computer is typically measured by the number of arithmetic operations per second it can perform (floating point operations per second or FLOPS). As of summer 2017, the fastest computers have reached a speed of 93 PetaFLOPS (on a standard benchmark), which is 93×1015 (or 93,000,000,000,000,000) operations per second. A system delivering one ExaFLOPS would be more than 10x faster (with at least 1018 operations per second). In comparison, a standard desktop computer reaches a computing performance in the GigaFLOPS range (one Gigaflop is 109 operations per second). Such an Exascale computer would be roughly more powerful by a factor of one billion.

If (by way of analogy) we let the speed of an Exascale computer correspond to the speed of a moon rocket (which was around 40,000 km/h for Apollo 10), then the computing performance of a typical desktop computer would correspond to about 1/10 of the speed of a snail (which crawls around 3 metres per hour).

History

The first petascale computer that came into operation was in 2008. At a supercomputing conference in 2009, Computerworld projected exascale implementation by 2018. Although the exascale wall for FLOPS was not broken in 2019, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory performed a 1.8×1018 operation calculation per second (which is not the same as 1.8×1018 FLOPS) on the Summit OLCF-4 Supercomputer while analyzing genomic information in 2018. They were Gordon Bell Award winners at Supercomputing 2018.

The exaFLOPS barrier was first broken in March of 2020 by the Folding Home project, used to fold proteins for medical research.

Exascale computing would be a significant achievement in computer engineering, as an exascale computer would have processing power on the order of the estimated processing power of the human brain at the neural level (although the functional power required to simulate a human brain might be lower). The Human Brain Project targets exascale computing capability.

Why building a fast computer is hard?

One could naively think that just connecting enough standard computers and memory would result in a fast enough system. However, this is not true. Just putting 1,000 cars or car engines together will neither produce a car 1,000 x as fast nor lead to a usable system 1,000 x as powerful, not to speak of noise, pollution and fuel consumption. Instead, different approaches would be necessary to reach those goals.

Similar barriers exist for computers. At the most basic level, a computer works by moving data from memory to a computer unit, calculating the results and moving the results back to memory. If using standard PC technology for the connection between memory and compute units, the sole movement of data for an Exascale computer would roughly need the same level of power as the whole of the UK. Thus, a promising approach to build Exascale machines is to store data very close to the compute unit where they are needed. One technique to put data closer to the processing unit is to extend the traditional two-dimensional layout of electric circuits by stacking integrated circuits also in the third dimension.  This will not only consume much less energy, but will also be much faster: Nowadays, the transport of data has become a major constraint on processing speed (much more than the computing itself), similar to the speed difference between slow airport security checks and fast flights. An Exascale computer would need hundreds of thousands if not millions of units comprising processing and memory, and fast connections between them, for data that is needed in more than one place. However, designing and producing such novel compute units is very expensive, so it is of paramount importance to find ways to use components which can be mass produced, and used outside the HPC world, to reduce cost.

Road to Exascale

Because of both the importance of increasing the speed to the Exascale FLOPS level and the difficulties encountered in building such computers, the EU, like other big economies, has launched a research program for the development of Exascale technology.  Member states have launched cooperation for the deployment of Exascale computers until 2022. The ETP4HPC think tank & advisory group has defined a research agenda to overcome the multiple difficulties of building and operating Exascale class systems.

Technological Challenges

It has been recognized that enabling applications to fully exploit capabilities of Exascale computing systems is not straightforward. In June 2014, the stagnation of the Top500 supercomputer list had observers question the possibility of exascale systems by 2020. Developing data-intensive applications over exascale platforms requires the availability of new and effective programming paradigms and runtimes systems.  The Folding Home project, the first to break this barrier, relied on a network of servers sending pieces of work to hundreds of thousands of clients using Client–server model network architecture.

Conclusion

Semiconductor engineering has never been easy, but one can argue that the industry had the wind at its back for roughly 60 years. During that time, manufacturing process improvements have complemented architecture and software advances to produce seeming clockwork gains, often doubling the performance every 18 to 24 months. Those process improvements have helped to drive the industry to exascale computing, but now appear to be slowing. As this article highlights, there will be no shortage of innovative approaches and creative concepts that could be perfected over the next decade to continue the exceptional growth of computing capabilities.  This is the beauty of computer engineering – demand driving innovation, and the exascale era is just the next milestone on the never-ending HPC journey.