Author: Pete Galati
Date: 11:38:22 02/28/00
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On February 28, 2000 at 13:29:11, Timothy J. Frohlick wrote: >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 It sounds like IBM marketing to me, nothing else. Pete
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