Author name: Mike M.

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German-French consortium to build EU’s first exascale supercomputer

Corporates and innovation, Deep tech, Europe, Government and policy, Next Featured / /

Today, France’s Eviden (part of cybersecurity, cloud, and high-performance computing group Atos) and German modular supercomputing company ParTec, announced they had won a contract to provide the very first exascale supercomputer in Europe.

The JUPITER project will cost €500mn in total. The computer itself will cost €273mn and run on Arm architecture SiPearl Rhea processors and Nvidia accelerator technology. It will be operated by the Jülich Supercomputing Centre in Germany. 

JUPITER will be the first system in Europe to surpass the threshold of one billion billion calculations per second. The aim is for it to support the development of high-precision models of complex systems, which could help solve questions regarding areas such as climate change, pandemics, and fusion energy. Of course, it would also enable intensive use of AI and analysis of large data volumes.

JUPITER stands for Joint Undertaking Pioneer for Innovative and Transformative Exascale Research (just in case you were wondering). The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) announced the project last year, and put out a call for tenders in January. 

But let’s back up for a moment — what exactly is an exascale supercomputer? 

One billion billion flops per second

An exascale system, as already mentioned, is a supercomputer or high-performance computing (HPC) system capable of performing a billion billion calculations per second. This is equivalent to one exaflop. 

In other words, an exaflop is a measure of performance for a supercomputer that can calculate at least one quintillion (exa-) floating point operations (flop) per second. Meanwhile, an exabyte is a memory subsystem packing a quintillion bytes of data. 

Building and operating exascale systems pose various technical challenges, including power consumption, heat management, scalability, and software optimisation. 

The world’s first exascale supercomputer is the Frontier, built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and housed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. It was deployed in 2021 and reached full capacity in 2022. It is set to be superseded by El Capitan at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, also by HPE. El Capitan will deliver over 2 exaflops when it comes online mid-2024. 

Meanwhile, the fastest supercomputer in Europe, owned by the EuroHPC JU, is the Lumi (Large Unified Modern Infrastructure). It sits in the CSC data centre in Kajaani, Finland, began operating in 2021, and can achieve more than 375 petaflops (one thousand million million flops per second), with a “theoretical peak” at 550 petaflops. That makes it the third fastest supercomputer in the world as of June 2022. 

German-French consortium to build EU’s first exascale supercomputer Read More »

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UK investigates Amazon, Microsoft cloud services over market dominance concerns

Fintech and ecommerce, Government and policy / /
UK investigates Amazon, Microsoft cloud services over market dominance concerns

The UK’s competition watchdog (CMA) has opened an investigation into Amazon’s and Microsoft’s cloud services after concerns over their dominant position in the market.

The move follows a study by telecoms regulator Ofcom, which “identified features that make it more difficult for UK businesses to switch and use multiple cloud suppliers,” mainly concerning the two US tech giants.

“We welcome Ofcom’s referral of public cloud infrastructure services to us for in-depth scrutiny,” said Sarah Carell, CEO at CMA. “This is a £7.5bn market that underpins a whole host of online services — from social media to AI foundation models. Many businesses now completely rely on cloud services, making effective competition in this market essential.”

Ofcom’s study found that Amazon and Microsoft are the two leading cloud providers in the UK, with a combined market share of 70% to 80% in 2022. Google came third at 5%-10%.

table showing the market share of cloud services in the UK in 2022
Credit: Ofcom

The regulator is mostly worried about three features of their services:

  • Egress fees: charges that customers pay to move their data out of a cloud.
  • Discounts: that may incentivise customers to use only one cloud provider, even if better quality alternatives are available.
  • Technical barriers to interoperability: which can prevent customers from switching between different clouds, or use more than one provider.

“Some UK businesses have told us they’re concerned about it being too difficult to switch or mix and match cloud providers, and it’s not clear that competition is working well,” said Fergal Farragher, the Ofcom director responsible for the study.

The CMA will conclude its investigation by April 2025. It has the power to make recommendations to the government or even impose its own remedies, including requiring companies to sell off parts of their business to improve competition.

Meanwhile, Microsoft and Amazon are facing tough competition measures enforced by the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Amazon Marketplace and Amazon Ads alongside Microsoft’s LinkedIn and Windows PC OS have five months to comply with a list of rules, such as allowing consumers to uninstall pre-installed apps, or enabling business users to promote and sell their products on their own websites.

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Bigscreen Beyond – Promising but Incomplete, Just Like This Review

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Bigscreen Beyond is the most interesting and promising new dedicated PC VR headset to come out in years, and while there’s a lot to like, we’re still waiting on a key piece that will make or break the headset.

Bigscreen Beyond has one goal in mind: make the smallest possible headset with the highest possible image quality.

Generally speaking, this unlikely headset (born from a VR software startup, after all) has ‘pulled it off.’ It’s an incredibly compact VR headset with built-in SteamVR tracking. It feels like a polished, high-end product with a look and feel that’s all its own. The visuals are great, though not without a few compromises. And it delivers something that no other headset to date has: a completely custom facepad that’s specially made for each customer.

I’ll dig more into the visual details soon, but first I need to point out that Bigscreen Beyond missing something important: built-in audio.

While there’s an official deluxe audio strap on the way, as of right now the only way to use Bigscreen Beyond is with your own headphones. In my case that means a pair of wireless gaming headphones connected to my PC. And it also means another thing to put on my head.

For some headsets this would be a notable but not deal-breaking inconvenience, for Bigscreen Beyond, however, it’s amplified because the headset’s custom-fit facepad means absolutely zero light leakage. It wasn’t until I started using Beyond that I realize just how often I use the nose-gap in the bottom of most headsets to get a quick glimpse into the real world, whether that’s to grab controllers, make sure I didn’t miss an important notification on my phone, or even pick up a pair of headphones.

With no nose-gap and no passthrough camera, you are 100% blind to the real world when you put on Beyond. Then you need to feel around to find your headphones. Then you need to feel around for your controllers.

Oops, something messed up on your PC and you need to restart SteamVR? Sure, you can lift the headset to your forehead to deal with it in a pinch, but then you put it back down and realize you got some oil on the lenses from your hair or forehead. So now you need to wipe the lenses… ok, let me put down the controllers, take off the headphones, take off the headset, wipe the lenses, then put on the headset, feel around for my headphones, then feel around for my controllers. Now I want to fix my headstrap… oops the headphones are in the way. Let me take those off for a minute…

All of this and more was the most frustrating part of an otherwise quite good experience when using Beyond. And sure, I could use wireless earbuds or even external speakers. But both have downsides that don’t exist with a built-in audio solution.

Photo by Road to VR

A lack of built-in audio on a VR headset just feels like a huge step back in 2023. It’s a pain in the ass. Full stop.

Until we have the upcoming deluxe audio strap to pair with Beyond, it feels incomplete. We’re patiently waiting to get our hands on the strap—as it will really make-or-break the headset—and plan to update our review when that time comes. Bigscreen says it expects the deluxe audio start to be available sometime in Q4.

Bigscreen Beyond Review

With the audio situation in the back of our minds, we can certainty talk about the rest of the headset. Before we dive in, here’s a look at the tech specs for some context:

Bigscreen Beyond Specs
Resolution 2,560 × 2,560 (6.5MP) per-eye

microOLED (2x, RGB stripe)
Pixels Per-degree (claimed) 32
Refresh Rate 75Hz, 90Hz
Lenses Tri-element pancake
Field-of-view (claimed) 102° diagonal
Optical Adjustments IPD (fixed, customized per headset)

eye-relief (fixed, customized per facepad)
IPD Adjustment Range 53–74mm (fixed, single IPD value per device)
Connectors DisplayPort 1.4, USB 3.0 (2x)
Accessory Ports USB 2.0 (USB-C connector) (1x)
Cable Length 5m
Tracking SteamVR Tracking 1.0 or 2.0 (external beacons)
On-board Cameras None
Input SteamVR Tracking controllers
On-board Audio None
Optional Audio Audio Strap accessory, USB-C audio output
Microphone Yes (2x)
Pass-through view No
Weight 170–185g
MSRP $1,000
MSRP (with tracking & controllers) $1,580

And here’s where it fits into the landscape of high-end PC VR headsets from a pricing standpoint:

Bigscreen Beyond Varjo Aero Vive Pro 2 Reverb G2 Valve Index
Headset Only $1,000 $1,000 $800 – $500
Full Kit $1,580 $1,580 $1,400 $600 $1,000

Smaller Than it Looks

Bigscreen Beyond is an incredibly unique offering in a landscape of mostly much larger and much bulkier PC VR headsets. Beyond is even smaller than it looks in photos. In fact, it’s so small that it nearly fits inside other VR headsets.

Getting it so small required that the company individually create custom-fit facepads for each and every customer. Doing so involves using an app to 3D scan your face, which is sent to the company and used as the blueprint to make the facepad that ships with your headset. At present the face scan is only supported on iOS devices (specifically iPhone XR or newer) which means anyone without access to such a device can’t even order the headset.

And this isn’t an illusion of customization, the company isn’t just picking from one of, say, 5 or 10 facepad shapes to find the one that most closely fits your face. Each facepad is completely unique—and the result is that it fits your face like a glove.

Photo by Road to VR

That means zero light leakage (which can be good for immersion, but problematic for the reasons described above). The headset is also dialed in—at the hardware level—for your specific IPD, based on your face scan.

Eyebox is Everything

If there’s one thing you should take away from this review it’s that Bigscreen Beyond has very good visuals and is uniquely conformable, but getting your eyes in exactly the correct position is critical for a good experience.

The eyebox (the optimal optical position relative to the lenses) is so tight that even small deviations can amplify artifacts and reduce the field-of-view. In any other headset it would be far too small to make the headset even a viable product, but Beyond’s commitment to custom-fit facepads makes it possible because they have relatively precise control over where the customer’s pupil will sit.

The first facepad the company sent me fit my face well, but the headset’s sweet spot (the clarity across lens) felt so tight that it made the already somewhat small field-of-view feel even smaller—too small for my taste. But by testing the headset without any facepad, I could tell that having my eyes closer would give me a notably better visual experience.

When I reached out to the company about this, they sent back a newly made facepad, this time with and even tighter eye-relief. This was the key to opening up the headset’s field-of-view, sweet spot, and improving some other artifacts just enough to the point that it didn’t feel too much of a sacrifice next other headsets.

Here’s a look at my field-of-view measurements for Bigscreen Beyond (with the optimal facepad), next to some other PC VR headsets. While the field-of-view only increased slightly from the first facepad to the second, the improvement in the sweet spot was significant.

Personal Measurements – 64mm IPD

(minimum-comfortable eye-relief, no glasses, measured with TestHMD 1.2)

Bigscreen Beyond Varjo Aero Vive Pro 2 Reverb G2 Valve Index
Horizontal FOV 98° 84° 102° 82° 106°
Vertical FOV 90° 65° 78° 78° 106°

It’s sort of incredible that moving from the first facepad to the second made such an improvement. At most, the difference in my pupil position between the two facepad was likely just a handful of milimeters. But the headset’s eye-box is just so tight that even small deviations will influence the visual experience.

Comfort & Visuals

Photo by Road to VR

With the ideal facepad—and ignoring the annoyance of dealing with an off-board audio solution—Bigscreen beyond felt like I jumped a few years forward into the future of headsets. It’s tiny, fits my face perfectly, the OLED displays offer true blacks, and the resolution is incredibly sharp with zero evidence of any screen-door-effect (unlit space between pixels).

While it does feel like you give up some field-of-view compared to other headsets, and there’s notable glare, the compact form-factor and light weight really makes a big difference to wearability.

With most VR headsets today I find myself adjusting them slightly on my head every 10 or 15 minutes to relieve pressure points and stay comfortable over a longer period. With Beyond, I found myself making those adjustments far less often, or not at all in some sessions. When playing over longer periods you just don’t notice the headset nearly as much as others, and you’re even less likely to have the occasional bonk on the headset from your flailing controllers, thanks to its much smaller footprint.

Brightness vs. Persistence

While Beyond’s resolution is very good—with resolving power that I found about equal to Varjo’s Aero headset—the default brightness level (100) leads to more persistence blur than I personally think is reasonable. Fortunately Bigscreen makes available a simple utility that lets you turn down brightness in favor of lower persistence blur.

I found that dialing it down to 50 was roughly the optimal balance between brightness and persistence for my taste. This level keeps the image sharp during head movement, but leaves dark scenes truly dark. Granted you can adjust the brightness on the fly if you really want.

Of course this will be content dependent, and Bigscreen is ostensibly tuning the headset with an eye toward movie viewing (considering their VR app is all about movie watching), where persistence blur wouldn’t be quite as bad because you move your head considerably less while watching a movie vs. playing a VR game.

Clarity

While Beyond doesn’t have Fresnel lenses, its pancake optics still end up with a lot of glare in high contrast scenes. I’d say it’s not quite as bad as what you get with most Fresnel optics, but it’s still quite notable. While Fresnel lenses tend to create ‘god rays’ which emanate from specific objects in the scene, Beyond’s pancake optics create glare that’s appears less directly attached to what’s in the scene.

Beyond the issues noted so far, other visual factors are all top notch: no pupil swim, geometric distortion, or chromatic aberration (again, this is all highly dependent on how well your facepad fits, so if you see much of the above, you might want to look into the fit of the headset).

Continue on Page 2: Bigscreen Beyond Review Summary »

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PvP Battler ‘Glassbreakers’ Gets New Champion, Steam Open Beta Coming in October

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Glassbreakers: Champions of Moss, the 1v1 battler from Polyarc launched into early access late last month, is releasing a new character today which aims to “hook” players into returning for more tactical rat-bashing action.

Revealed last week, new champion ‘Mojo’ is now available for players on Quest, which for now is the only platform with an open beta.

Polyarc says can wishlist Glassbreakers now on Steam, with a planned open beta release slated to arrive sometime in October.

Mojo (aka ‘MJ22’) brings a few new ranged abilities to the 1v1 real-time battler, such as the ‘Free Hugs’ ability which lets Mojo launch a hook attack to pull the opposing squad’s Champions in towards them.

Leveling up, the hook not only launches farther, but it also applies a slowing effect to enemies. Besides grabbing enemies, Mojo’s hook can also snag high-priority targets that the other squad is trying to protect.

The studio announced it’s also hosting a special ‘Quest for the Chest’ event from now until October 5th, which is boosting the speed at which players level up their weekly chests. What’s more, for the next two weeks the top-tier chests will contain “extra special rewards including a chance at never-before-seen masks and emblems for players and their squads,” Polyarc says.

The game is slated to make the transition from App Lab game to the Quest Store proper  early next year.

To follow along with progress, take a look at the game’s Trello board to see how events are shaping up, and how bug fixes are coming along.

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German energy giant tests power-generating kite at new facility in Ireland

Corporates and innovation, Startups and technology, Sustainability / /

German energy giant RWE has put a new airborne wind test facility in Ireland to work for the first time, as it explores alternative forms of green electricity. 

The experimental technology was developed by Dutch startup Kitepower. It connects a large kite to a generator with an ultra-strong rope, generating electricity as the kite goes up in altitude.

“Kitepower, as the name suggests, uses a large kite structure with a hybrid inflatable and fixed fibreglass skeleton to hold the kite open. It has a wingspan of 60 square metres and weighs only 80kg, including the Kite Control and sensor unit,” explains Johannes Peschel, the company’s CEO.

The Kite Control Unit (KCU) is attached to the tether and controls the direction the kite flies. The Dyneema tether (an ultra-strong rope which is stronger than a steel wire of the same dimension, but has less than one-tenth of its weight) is attached to a Ground Station, housed in a conventional seven-metre container.  

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Electricity is produced when the kite is flown in a cross-wind, figure-of-eight pattern, achieving a high pulling force. This hauls/draws the tether from the winch in the ground station. Once the maximum tether length is reached, the kite is reeled in and the process starts anew. Normally, these two operations take just 100 seconds — 80 seconds for reeling out and 20 seconds for reeling in. To find out more about the tech, check out the video below: 

“Whether you resonate with people around the world in a casual conversation, playing games and socializing or you riff off each other when creating anything from art to programming complex games, you’ll find your place here,” the app’s Steam description reads.

Like Neos VR, Resonite heavily focuses on in-app content creation, allowing users to create their own interactive avatars, art, gadgets, and “complex interactive worlds and games.”

There’s no release date yet for Resonite, however the app’s Steam page says it’s launching into early access sometime in October. Whatever the case, Resonite doesn’t appear to have ambitions to launch on Quest, PSVR 2, or mobile hardware currently, essentially setting it up to be a PC-exclusive experience likely appealing mostly to enthusiasts.

We’re curious to learn more about Resonite, and what sets it apart from Neos. Whatever the case, there seems to be a fairly substantial expected migration of Neos users to Resonite, as Resonite’s Patreon page already boasts over $14,000 monthly donations.

According to cached pages, support for Neos VR’s Patreon has decreased significantly in the past two years since the project included its own cryptocurrency and friction arose between its creators; near its all-time high of over $18,000 per-month donations, today Neos garners a little under $5,000 per month from backers.

‘Neos VR’ Metaverse Creator Unveils Spiritual Successor ‘Resonite’ Read More »

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Bioniq taps big data algorithms to make supplements bespoke

Corporates and innovation, Ecosystems, Startups and technology / /

London-based startup Bioniq, which creates hyper-personalised supplements for its customers — who range from pro athletes to regular people on the quest for longer life — has gone global.

Founded in 2019, Bioniq leverages a patented algorithm based on blood test data from more than 40,000 people across 4 million biochemical data points to create a supplement regime tailor-made to your body and health goals. 

“STOP GUESSING which mass-made supplements to take. None are meant for you,” it exclaims on its website. 

The company was founded by former German national team basketball player Vadim Fedotov and Dr Konstantin Karuzin, a neurosurgeon who previously developed a system to improve the cognitive and physical functions of professional athletes in Switzerland.  

Bioniq taps big data to achieve hyper-personalisation, which it claims to be 200,000 times higher than similar products on the market. The whole idea is to customise healthcare to the greatest extent possible.  

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By helping to address underlying micronutrient imbalances, Bioniq’s personalised supplements enable clients to benefit from improved energy, better sleep quality, faster recovery and healthier ageing — at least that’s what it says on the bottle. 

“I couldn’t be more proud of the work we’ve done to bring this level of unprecedented precision to the supplements market,” said founder Fedotov. “Identifying real nutrient imbalances and taking a personalized supplement formula to address them can help individuals not only feel better but also perform better and stay healthier over time.”

Bioniq is one of many startups flooding into the new, but steadily growing, biohacking industry. Biohacking refers to a wide range of incremental changes a person can make to their bodies and lifestyles, from taking supplements and using wearable technology to monitor health, to using implanted devices.

Bioniq is backed by several European investment funds, including HV Capital, and Unbound, Rocket Internet, Porsche Ventures, and others. It has raised a total of $15mn to date.

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