Feb 15
Feb 15
Well, there’s one more round of Jeopardy to go, but the round that began yesterday and ended today was a major win for the silicon contingent. After starting the day tied with Brad, Watson barely let his opponents get in a word edgewise during Double Jeopardy, and broke the $36k mark before Final Jeopardy. Both Brad and Ken were able to double up on the Final Jeopardy question, at which Watson failed miserably, but he appended his answer (Toronto) with plenty of question marks, and bet less than a grand. The final result was Watson at $35,754, Brad at $10,000, and Ken Jennings with $4,800. This round’s scores will be added to the scores of tomorrow’s round to determine the overall winner, who will walk (or teraflop) away with $1 million in cash.
Watson soundly beats the humans in first round of Jeopardy originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Feb 2011 21:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Feb 14
After practice rounds and plenty of hype, Watson, IBM’s latest supercomputer, stepped up to the podium to take on two of Jeopardy’s greatest champions: Ken Jennings, who won 74 straight rounds of Jeopardy en route to becoming a pop culture icon, and Brad Rutter, who netted more money than any other contestant while winning the three of the biggest Jeopardy tournaments (defeating Ken Jennings in the process). More »
Feb 14
Today, tomorrow, and the 16th are the fateful days: IBM’s Watson supercomputer will go head to head with Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings in this silly, human-devised game we call Jeopardy. It promises to be some kickass TV, at the very least, and a historic event if Watson can prevail over his fleshy competition. The two matches, which are being spread over the three days, were pre-taped, so Ken, Brad, Alex and Watson already know the outcome, but they’ve done a pretty good job of keeping the secret so far. Hopefully they can keep mum until 7pm-ish this evening (check your local listings for a specific time). Need something to keep you occupied until then? Check out the great Esquire feature on Ken Jennings at the More Coverage link below. Oh, and don’t miss our coverage of last month’s preview match.
Humans had a good run: Watson to debut on Jeopardy tonight originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Feb 2011 12:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Feb 10
The Engadget Show returns next Thursday, February 17th
Posted in: engadget show, EngadgetShow, nokia, the engadget show, TheEngadgetShow, Today's Chili
Gentlemen and ladies, it’s that time again — that’s right, the Engadget Show is back next Thursday, February 17th! We’ll have more details for you on Monday, but clear your schedules, cancel your hot dates, put down Dead Space 2, and get yourself to New York City next Thursday. As usual, we’ll be streaming live right here on Engadget, but you’ll have to trust us when we say you’re gonna want to be at this one in person. Stay tuned!
If you’re a member of the media who wishes to attend, please contact us at: engadgetshowmedia [at] engadget [dot] com, and we’ll try to accommodate you. All other non-media questions can be sent to: engadgetshow [at] engadget [dot] com.
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The Engadget Show returns next Thursday, February 17th originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Feb 09
IBM’s Mira supercomputer does ten petaflops with ease, inches us closer to exascale-class computing
Posted in: science, Today's Chili, us
Say hello to the Blue Gene/Q, or if you’re looking for something a bit less intimidating, “Mira.” That’s IBM’s latest and greatest concoction, a ten-petaflop supercomputer capable of running programs at ten quadrillion calculations a second. Hard to say who’d win between Mira and Watson, of course, but there’s absolutely no question who’d come out on top if Mira were pitted against her predecessor Intrepid (hint: Mira’s 20x faster). To put this all in perspective, IBM‘s chiming in with this:
“If every man, woman and child in the United States performed one calculation each second, it would take them almost a year to do as many calculations as Mira will do in one second.”
Mira’s next stop is at the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, where it’ll be used to tackle 16 projects in particular that were drawn from a pool of proposals to gain access to her capabilities. We’re told that these include a range of initiatives — from reducing energy inefficiencies in transportation and developing advanced engine designs to spurring advances in energy technologies — and in time, it could lead to exascale-class computers “that will be faster than petascale-class computers by a factor of a thousand.” And here we are getting excited about a 5GHz Core i7.
IBM’s Mira supercomputer does ten petaflops with ease, inches us closer to exascale-class computing originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Feb 2011 11:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Jan 24
As you may have been able to tell from the flurry of research that’s occurred over the past few years (which has even resulted in a Nobel Prize), there’s plenty of folks betting on graphene as the next big thing for computing. One of the big players in that respect has been IBM, which first opened up the so-called graphene bandgap and has created some of the fastest graphene transistors around, but is now sounding a slightly more cautious tone when it comes to the would-be demise of silicon-based CPUs. Speaking with Custom PC, IBM researcher Yu-Ming Lin said that “graphene as it is will not replace the role of silicon in the digital computing regime,” and further explained that “there is an important distinction between the graphene transistors that we demonstrated, and the transistors used in a CPU.” To that end, he notes that unlike silicon, “graphene does not have an energy gap,” and that it therefore cannot be completely “switched off,” which puts it at quite a disadvantage compared to silicon. Intel’s director of components research, Mike Mayberry, also chimed in on the matter, and noted that “the industry has so much experience with it that there are no plans to move away from silicon as the substrate for chips.” That doesn’t mean that there still isn’t a bright future for graphene, though — Lin gives the example of hybrid circuit, for instance, which could use graphene as a complement to silicon in order to “enrich the functionality of computer chips.”
IBM says graphene won’t fully replace silicon in CPUs originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Jan 2011 01:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Jan 22
IBM looks back on 100 years of history, finds plenty to be proud of (video)
Posted in: film, research, Today's Chili, video
Want to know who the self-confessed “mother of the motherboard” is? Or why every piece of organically farmed, tenderly loved food at your local Trader Joe’s has a barcode on it? Or perhaps you’re curious to learn more about how millions of airline reservations can be made around the world with unfailing reliability? All those queries have their answers in IBM’s self-congratulating videos after the break. Commissioned as a celebration of the company’s upcoming 100th birthday, they chronicle some of its more notable moments in the global spotlight. Our favorite little nugget of discovery was finding out that testing for the IBM Personal Computer included the question, “would it run Pac-Man?” — conclusively proving that the foremost reason for the PC’s existence is, and has always been, gaming.
Continue reading IBM looks back on 100 years of history, finds plenty to be proud of (video)
IBM looks back on 100 years of history, finds plenty to be proud of (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Jan 2011 18:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Jan 19
IBM forms new partnership with ARM in hopes of developing ludicrously small chip processing technology
Posted in: arm, partnership, processors, Today's Chili
We’ve seen IBM and ARM team up before, but this week both companies announced a new joint initiative to develop 14nm chip processing technology. That’s significantly smaller than the 20nm SoC technology ARM hopes to create in partnership with TSMC, and makes the company’s previous work with IBM on 32nm semiconductors look like a cake walk. The potential benefits, though, are faster processors that require less power, and feature lower per unit manufacturing costs Who knows if or when we’ll see tangible results from the tag team, but if IBM’s Watson can beat Jeopardy champions, further reducing the average size of a feature that can be created on a chip should be elementary, right? To read over the full announcement check out the press release after the break.
IBM forms new partnership with ARM in hopes of developing ludicrously small chip processing technology originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 18:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Jan 13
It’s man vs. the machine.Yes, we’ve been talking about this since June, but the time is nigh. Computers are going to take over the world Jeopardy. As we mentioned again in December, IBM’s supercomputer, named Watson, will take on other real human contestants in everyone’s favorite game-show, “Jeopardy.” The show is set to air in February, and the tapings will begin tomorrow.
Watson will be competing with trivia-masters Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. IBM and Jeopardy gave us a sneak peak today of the three contestants whipping through three categories in no time at all. Every question was answered correctly, but guess who came out on top at the end of the round? That’s right, it was Watson.
According to Wired,
“The system is powered by 10 racks of IBM POWER 750 servers running Linux, and uses 15 terabytes of RAM, 2,880 processor cores and can operate at 80 teraflops. Watson scans the 2 million pages of content in its ‘brain’ in less than three seconds. The system is not connected to the internet, but totally self-contained. The machine is the size of 10 refrigerators.”
So, will Watson reign supreme in the real showdown? Tune in to find out.
[Photo Credit: Wired]
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