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Thursday, 2 April 2020

D-Wave Makes Quantum Computer Time Free to Anyone Fighting Coronavirus

For the past few years, manufacturers like Google, Intel, and IBM have been working on implementing universal quantum computers and demonstrating they can be used to perform useful work. Another company, D-Wave, has focused on building quantum annealers rather than a universal quantum computer. Quantum annealing can be used for a more limited subset of problems, but this approach also helped D-Wave be one of the first manufacturers to market.

Now, the firm is opening up its quantum computers to anyone who has ideas for how to use them to find a cure for Covid-19. D-Wave and a number of its customers, including Cineca, Denso, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Kyocera, MDR, Menten AI, NEC, OTI Lumionics, QAR Lab at LMU Munich, Sigma-i, Tohoku University, and Volkswagen, are all collectively offering assistance via engineering team access, advice on how to formulate problems for a D-Wave system, and solutions development.

A recent post on DWaveSys states:

We are making available free Leap resources to help fight COVID-19. This includes time on our quantum processing units (QPUs) and hybrid solvers, as well as access to a wealth of other resources to help you get started, including our online integrated development environment (IDE), community discussion forums, learning materials, and more.

Just last month, D-Wave announced Leap 2, a new quantum cloud service for building and deploying quantum applications (that’s the platform mentioned above). According to CEO Alan Baratz, D-Wave’s machines can be used to find new methods of diagnosing the disease, modeling its spread, evaluating potential drug combinations, and calculating supply distribution.

“The D-Wave system, by design, is particularly well-suited to solve a broad range of optimization problems, some of which could be relevant in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Baratz told VentureBeat. “Potential applications that could benefit from hybrid quantum/classical computing include drug discovery and interactions, epidemiological modeling, hospital logistics optimization, medical device and supply manufacturing optimization, and beyond.”

Quantum Computing Joins the Battle!

It’s not surprising to see quantum resources being brought to bear against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Classical computing resources dedicated to fighting Covid-19 have spiked dramatically in recent weeks. Here’s the latest from Folding@Home:

The reference to “x86 FLOPS” is an effort by the FAH team to synchronize all of their FLOP measurements into a single metric. After blowing through the exascale barrier last week, FAH growth appears to have tapered off, but don’t forget — it’s not too late to throw your hat into the ring and crunch some data to try and find potential weak spots in the virus. FAH is publishing regular updates on its efforts against Covid-19 and a number of new work units were recently made available for CPU-only configurations, so everyone can contribute even if you have an older GPU.

As for whether quantum computing can discover something specific about Covid-19 that classical machines can’t model, it’s very early days, and I don’t want to make that kind of assumption right now. It is possible, however, that combining quantum and classical solutions will still lead to a faster solution than classical computing alone, and right now, every single day counts.

Now Read:

from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/computing/308723-d-wave-makes-quantum-computer-time-free-to-anyone-fighting-coronavirus

Don't send rainbow pictures to Nightingale hospital, NHS says

Despite a social media shout-out for rainbow artwork, the NHS has asked people to share their pictures online only

from BBC News - London https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52134223

Coronavirus: Stranded pair 'don't know' when they will return

The two Londoners have been stuck in an Argentine city since a coronavirus quarantine was imposed.

from BBC News - London https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52134590

Intel Launches New 10th Gen Comet Lake-H Mobile CPUs

Intel has launched a new suite of 10th Generation mobile CPUs in the Comet Lake family. Like other recent product launches, these chips are also based on 14nm (Ice Lake notwithstanding), but Intel has pulled out the frequency stops for this lineup of parts.

The previous 9th Gen Core i7 CPUs top out at 6 cores and 4.6GHz Turbo, while the 9th Gen Mobile Core i9 family ran up to eight cores and 5GHz. With 10th Gen, Intel is pushing the envelope further, with several chips landing at 5GHz or above in both the Core i7 and Core i9 families:

So, how much is CPU performance changing? The top-end 10980HK picks up +300MHz in terms of Turbo frequency and the Core i7-10875H introduces an eight-core part into the i7 family. There’s no direct comparison here, but the Core i9-9980H was an 8C/16T 2.3GHz / 4.8GHz CPU, while the i7-10875H is an 8C/16 chip at 2.3GHz / 5.1GHz.

The Core i7-10750H holds the same 2.6GHz base frequency as its 9th Gen counterpart, but adds 500MHz of Turbo frequency, with burst speeds up to 5GHz now and the same 6C/12T configuration as its predecessor. According to Intel, the Core i9-10980HK has a tau of 56 seconds, while all of the other chips in the 10th Gen family have a tau of 28 seconds. Tau is the length of time the CPU can remain in its PL2 state, which is the higher power-draw configuration. The i9-10980HK has a PL2 of 65W but PL2 is OEM-configurable and can be turned up to as much as 135W. The all-core turbo on the Core i9-10980HK is 4.4GHz, which is pretty solid for an 8-core CPU in a 45W TDP, but holding maximum frequency does depend on power consumption.

It’s not clear what to expect from Comet Lake, as far as sustained performance advantage over 9th Gen. Intel has mostly increased its boost clocks rather than base, and since base clocks are used to derive TDP, this explains how the company can advertise higher boosts without needing to raise its TDP figures. That doesn’t mean 10th Gen chips can’t outperform 9th Gen CPUs, though: Aggressive binning to reduce the power consumption of these chips at high-frequency operation and process node tuning to maximum high-frequency efficiency could both yield dividends, even when 10th and 9th Gen chips are both built on the same process node.

The 10th Gen family continues to support features like Thermal Velocity Boost (TVB), which attempts to push CPU clocks higher if temperatures are low enough and the power budget is available. Features like Turbo Boost Max 3.0 are being deployed in the Core i9 family, with support for standards like DDR4-2933, though Intel CPUs aren’t terribly dependent on memory frequency.

During these sorts of briefings, Intel and AMD make a number of claims about how much they’ve improved performance between their current flagship hardware and a typical system from 3-5 years back. Of course, these are always intended to showcase how much CPU performance has improved in the relevant period of time, but I happened to have run some tests recently comparing the 7700HQ (2016 45W CPU) to the Surface Laptop 3’s Core i7-1065G7 (Ice Lake, 10nm). It was downright interesting to see the areas where the 15W CPU could tie or even exceed the 45W chip — as well as the spots where the four-year-old Kaby Lake could stretch its legs and take the crown back from Ice Lake.

Of course, the challenge for Intel this year isn’t competing with its own 3-4-year-old hardware, but tackling AMD’s Ryzen Mobile 4000 family. We hope to have data on that match-up for you soon — our own review of the 4900HS was delayed by technical difficulties compounded by Covid-19, but we’re working on it.

Now Read:

from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/computing/308733-intel-launches-new-10th-gen-comet-lake-h-mobile-cpus

Coronavirus: Man jailed for PPE theft in London

Mark Manley contaminated some of the items he stole, leaving them unusable.

from BBC News - London https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52136581

Zoom’s Security and Privacy Practices Kind of Zuck

In our collective scramble to turn three-foot stacks of pizza boxes, heaps of children’s toys, and last week’s laundry into credible office space, a handful of companies have gained a great many users in a short amount of time. Zoom Video usage has surged over the past two weeks, driving the company’s stock price up, but that same popularity has encouraged a good deal more scrutiny of the firm’s various privacy and security practices. Zoom isn’t coming off very well in these comparisons, and the bad news just keeps piling up.

Most recently, The Intercept revealed that Zoom doesn’t offer end-to-end encryption, despite specific promises to the contrary. End-to-end encryption is a feature Zoom claims to offer on video calls, both in its security whitepaper and in its application.

Image by The Intercept

When asked if they actually implement E2E encryption, however, Zoom said it doesn’t.

“Currently, it is not possible to enable E2E encryption for Zoom video meeting,” the representative wrote. “Zoom video meetings use a combination of TCP and UDP. TCP connections are made using TLS and UDP connections are encrypted with AES using a key negotiated over a TLS connection.”

Instead of enabling end-to-end encryption, Zoom uses TLS. This is transport encryption, not end-to-end encryption. The most important difference for end-users is this: With true end-to-end encryption, like that offered by Apple via FaceTime or Signal, the company providing the service can’t access your video, audio, or text data, even if it wanted to. There’s no information to give governments who come looking for it.

Transport encryption, in contrast, allows Zoom to peek inside audio and video chat (chat messages, it turns out, are actually end-to-end encrypted in Zoom sessions, even if nothing else is). As the report points out, advertising itself as offering E2E when it doesn’t could constitute deceptive marketing and trade practices if customers chose to use Zoom as a result of these claims rather than a competitor service.

Companies cannot be allowed to dilute the definition of security terms, lest we lose their intended meanings altogether. Transport encryption is transport encryption, and it’s not the same thing as end-to-end encryption, no matter how useful Zoom finds it to pretend they are.

Encryption Isn’t Zoom’s Only Problem

If lousy encryption were the only thing Zoom had been caught doing in recent days, it would still be a significant story — the company is claiming to provide security services it doesn’t actually offer. In the last few weeks, however, a number of Zoom issues have come to light, including:

Zoom has been sharing end-user data with Facebook, even if you don’t use Facebook. On March 26, Motherboard wrote: “The Zoom app notifies Facebook when the user opens the app, details on the user’s device such as the model, the time zone and city they are connecting from, which phone carrier they are using, and a unique advertiser identifier created by the user’s device which companies can use to target a user with advertisements.” None of this was disclosed in the company’s privacy policies. (Zoom has since said it will end these arrangements.)

The EFF covered in mid-March how Zoom allows meeting hosts to monitor whether people have the window focused, which explains why I kept getting asked if I was paying attention during a recent Zoom meeting with a company I won’t identify. At the time, I found it confusing, since I was taking notes and asking questions, but it makes more sense now. Pro Tip: If I’m watching your face or your slideshow for more than a few seconds at a time, it probably means I’m not paying attention. If I’m paying attention, I’m screenshotting the slideshow for later review and taking notes in a separate application.

An investigation published just today found that Zoom has been leaking emails and photos to strangers based on how it handles personal email addresses. Zoom’s Company Directory adds individuals to the contact lists of other individuals based on a common domain name. Individuals with unusual email domain providers, however, have found themselves added to common lists of up to several thousand people, constituting all of the other users of that service who also signed up for Zoom. This problem doesn’t happen to major email address providers like Gmail or Yahoo, but if you got your service through “ExtremeMail.com,” you might find yourself on a common “Company Directory” email list with every other ExtremeMail.com customer, even though none of you have anything in common beyond your email provider. It’s also got a security problem that allows attackers to steal your login credentials on a Windows PC.

Zoom, it seems, has some house-cleaning to do before it deserves to claim the mantle of “America’s Favorite Pandemic Video Service.” It doesn’t offer end-to-end marketing for video and audio calls and it’s already been caught funneling data to Facebook even when people don’t have Facebook accounts. At a minimum, the company needs to conduct an audit of its own practices and fix such issues, pronto.

Feature image by ExtremeTech, created from Zoom marketing material and various images of Zuckerberg available at Wikimedia or by Anthony Quintano, Flickr.

Now Read:

from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/internet/308702-zooms-security-and-privacy-practices-kind-of-zuck

BBC to air memorable sporting highlights including London 2012

The London 2012 Olympics and Euro '96 are just some of the memorable moments that viewers can relive during the coronavirus pandemic.

from BBC News - London https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/52134253