IBM Shows a World of "Smarter Computing"

Imagine a world where computers and servers are no longer required to be updated manually or be environmentally harmful at any given state. One that would be energy efficient, requires less space and had more bang for the buck powerful computing power than ever before. This has been one of IBM's goal since their inception of a world with Smarter Computing. This is one that would literally change the face of information technology by leaps and bounds. They already have achieved remarkable advancements in this field as we learned about it from the IBM Technology Expo 2011 last May 17.

Have you heard of Watson? Nope, not the one with Sherlock Holmes. If not, watch this!

You see, IBM just has shown here how a specialized super computer (that is not connected to the world wide web) and how it would be able to compete with the best minds in the world for this game. Watson can come up with a lot of things which includes a) an answer, b) gauge how confident he is about the answer, c) the capability to learn about it, d) analyze and understand human speech no matter what you want it to mean and e) say the actual words for the answer. The billions of dollars they have spent on research and development has achieved so much in a short amount of time. They even used Power7, a next generation server processor which succeeds the Power6. IBM had several sites in different countries to work and make a "Petascale Supercomputer Architecture" that can do quadrillion rate jobs in a short amount of time. This is possible by doing techniques and strategies in parallel computing. These new generation of Blade Servers are faster, smaller compared to the other big predecessors of the IBM Power Systems.

This is how DeepQA thinks. The power behind Watson.
(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Mr. Steven Seah, Smart Analytics Leader of the Systems and Technology Group for IBM in ASEAN explained the things WATSON can do. If you think about the possibilities that these servers can do in other applications such as medicine, nuclear management, ATM, file storage and other utilities for enterprise scaled businesses; the outlook is very promising. Imagine the return of investment for many corporations that continue to use bigger racks, space and carbon footprint requirements when they use just a few of these instead. Costing wise and strategy wise this is the way to go. Take a look at what it can eventually do for Cancer research:

With IBM Power 7 Systems it can handle different forms of Analytics, Data Warehousing and increased throughput. It can compare and analyze millions of pages and get almost the same amount of questions for it.

Mr. Eugene Bay, the Power Systems Manager for IBM in ASEAN talked about how they led the market these past few years because of some systems that were not supported by other vendors; like the Oracle Solaris OS for the UNIX platform. They have been able to dominate the market because of these blunders. It still employs the same but improved cooling systems they had with the Power 6 series. They used Chilled water instead of Air in order to get it up to 4000 times more efficient in cooling. It's better for the environment. The noise is not much of a concern and they could probably have things to aesthetically remove that pretty soon too. Insider information seems to indicate there will be Power 8 in the works and that again would have monumental changes in the information technology landscape as IBM has done in the past. Making this and have an OS that would be able to accommodate two architectures or more would take a lot of resources to achieve. Think of what it can do with Mac if it had Power7 on it. That would count around 8 cores a chip then two of these chips per module with two modules and 4 SMT threads a chip it could blow your mind into smithereens just doing the math. They told me never to fear advancements in technologies like these if I think that this would require less manpower requirements because they would just be assigned to other productive tasks later on. Life would be easier and less strenuous for what it's worth.

I'd like to take this bit to thank a few people from IBM for inviting me last May 17, 2011. You made me go back to school again at this day and age ha-ha! Thank you to Country General Manager James Velasquez, Mr. Owen Cammayo and the beautiful ladies from IBM Philippines, IBM ASEAN and External Relations for everything.

Congratulations to IBM for spending a lot on Research and Development on this; you have done well!

L-R IBM Philippine General Manager James Velasquez, Mr. Steven Seah, Smart Analytics Leader of the Systems and Technology Group for IBM in ASEAN and Mr. Eugene Bay, the Power Systems Manager for IBM in ASEAN
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