Author: Timothy J. Frohlick
Date: 10:29:11 02/28/00
Go up one level in this thread
On February 28, 2000 at 12:37:54, Dan Simmons wrote: >Excerpt from article in Physician's Financial News: > >IBM is following up on the success of its chess-playing supercomputer Deep Blue >with a new endeavor that will delve into the mysteries of the human body. The >company recently said it plans to build a computer of staggering power to solve >the mystery of the structure of proteins, the workhorse molecules and building >blocks of the body. > >Paul Horn, senior vice-pres of reasearch at IBM, said the computer, called Blue >Gene, could provide crucial understanding of how viruses like hepatitis and HIV >attack the body.... > >IBM expects it will take four to five years and $100 million to build Blue Gene, >which will be a million times faster than the average desktop computer. It will >perform 1 quadrillion mathematical operations per second - 500 times more than >the fastest computer today. > >Still, IBM's task is daunting.... > >Blue Gene will have 1 million processors, the central computing engines of >computers, working together. The concept is not new, but the scale is >unprecedented and will force the computer to be "self-healing" - that is, it has >to be able to detect failing components, seal them off and direct the work >elsewhere. > >In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer defeated the world's greatest chess >player, Garry Kasparov, in a highly publicized tournament. Sounds Impressive, Five years to do this project seems a bit much. Will processor enhancements render Blue Gene obsolete before it gets going? This sounds like a NASA project. If each processor consumes two watts then we can all keep nice and warm at least. Tim Frohlick
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.