Researchers at IBM’s laboratories in Zurich have developed a new algorithm that can sort, correlate, and analyze millions of random data sets in minutes. Without the algorithm, the analysis would have taken days for supercomputers to process, says IBM researcher Costas Bekas. He says the algorithm could be used to analyze data measuring electricity usage and air or water pollution levels. The algorithm also could be used to break down data from global financial markets. The algorithm combines models of data calibration and statistical analysis that can assess measurement models and relationships between data sets. Bekas says the algorithm, which can analyze nine terabytes of data in less than 20 minutes, makes data analysis more cost and energy efficient because it reduces the load on supercomputers.
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IBM Speeds Up Data Analysis With New Algorithm |
by sparky3887
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IBM Announces Advances Toward a Computer that Works Like a Human Brain |
by sparky3887
Researchers from IBM’s Almaden Research Center and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have performed a computer simulation that matches the scale and complexity of a cat’s brain, while researchers from IBM and Stanford University say they have developed an algorithm for mapping the human brain in unprecedented detail. The researchers say these efforts could help build a computer that replicates the complexity of the human brain. In the first project, an IBM supercomputer at the Lawrence Livermore Lab was used to model the movement of data through a structure with 1 billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses, enabling researchers to observe how information “percolates” through a system similar to a feline cerebral cortex. The research is part of IBM project manager Dharmendra Modha’s efforts to design a new computer by first better understanding how the brain works. “The brain has awe-inspiring capabilities,” Modha says. “It can react or interact with complex, real-world environments, in a context-dependent way. And yet it consumes less power than a light bulb and it occupies less space than a two-liter bottle of soda.” Modha says a major difference between the brain and traditional computers is that current computer are designed on a model that differentiates between processing and storing data, which can lead to a lag in updating information. However, the brain can integrate and react to a constant stream of sights, sounds, and sensory information. Modha imagines a cognitive computer capable of analyzing a constant stream of information from global trading floors, banking institutions, and real estate markets to identify key trends and their consequences; or a computer capable of evaluating pollution using real-time sensors from around the world.
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Unlimited Compute Capacity Coming, IBM Says |
by sparky3887
IBM Canada Lab director Martin Wildberger predicts that unlimited computing capacity will become a reality in the near future, putting the power of modern mainframes in devices such as smartphones. Wildberger, speaking at the recent IBM-sponsored Center for Advanced Studies Conference in Toronto, said the world is becoming increasingly digitized, and sensors and radio-frequency identification technologies are becoming more “abundant, pervasive, and ubiquitous.” Simultaneously, the world is becoming more interconnected through mobile phones and increasing online access, which has raised the awareness and expectations of consumers and forced businesses to react faster. These trends have made an unlimited amount of data available to businesses, and the ability to use that data has become an important challenge. Wildberger noted, for example, that automotive companies are looking at driving pattern information to develop a real-time system capable of detecting if a driver is falling asleep. Despite such possibilities, Wildberger said that IBM data shows that 85 percent of computing capacity is idle, and 70 cents of every dollar spent on information technology goes toward maintaining systems instead of taking advantage of new data. He said the companies that invest in becoming smarter and successfully capitalizing on the data created in a world with unlimited computing capacity will be the most successful.
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IBM Joins Pursuit of $1,000 Personal Genome |
by sparky3887
IBM plans to disclose technical details of its initiative to reduce the cost of personal genome sequencing from between $5,000 and $50,000 to $1,000 or less, and its ultimate goal is to make the procedure cost no more than $100. IBM researchers plan to employ the company’s proficiency in semiconductor manufacturing, computing, and material science to develop an integrated sequencing machine that is able to reduce sequencing costs while also upgrading speed and accuracy. In doing so, IBM is joining a number of international competitors racing to achieve a similar aim. IBM is banking on a DNA transistor designed to sequence genomes by reading DNA pulled through an atomic-size hole called a nanopore. The company says the objective is the construction of a machine capable of sequencing an individual genome of as many as 3 billion nucleotides in just a few hours. The system’s core is comprised of a mechanism that repeatedly pauses a negatively-charged DNA strand as an electric field pulls the strand through the nanopore. Although this mechanism is reliable, the research team says the sensing technology to control the rate of movement and to read the specific nucleotides has not yet been demonstrated. The capability to read longer sequences is a critical advance needed for the improvement of DNA analysis quality. Harvard geneticist George M. Church says the system will need to read sequences as long as 1 million bases, while current technology can only read 30 to 800 bases.
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IBM ‘X-Rays’ a Molecule |
by sparky3887
IBM researchers have imaged the inner structure of a molecule, an achievement they say could lead to smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient processors and memory devices. The researchers say the breakthrough is a milestone in surface microscopy, which explores the use of molecules and atoms in nanotechnology. The new breakthrough comes two months after IBM scientists used the same method, called non-contact atomic force microscopy, to measure the charge states of atoms within a molecule. The two discoveries are considered major advances in the understanding of how an electrical charge transmits through molecules or molecular networks. Understanding how a charge is distributed at the atomic scale is essential for building smaller, more powerful, and more energy-efficient computing components. To capture an image of the inner structure of a molecule, IBM scientists used an atomic force microscope at an ultra-high vacuum at minus 451 degrees Fahrenheit, allowing the researchers to look through the electron cloud covering the molecule to see its atomic structure.
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IBM Security Software Masks Confidential Info |
by sparky3887
IBM researchers have developed Masking Gateway for Enterprises (MAGEN), software that uses optical character recognition and screen scraping technology to identify and conceal confidential information. IBM says MAGEN can prevent data leakage and allow for data sharing while protecting sensitive business data. MAGEN works at the screen level by “catching” the information before it reaches the screen, analyzing the content, and masking sensitive details that should be hidden from the potential viewer. The system treats the information as a picture, uses optical character recognition to identify confidential sections, and places a data “mask” over those details, without copying, changing, or processing the data. IBM says customers can set masking rules that can be defined per screen structure or per application. MAGEN does not change the software program or data, but rather filters information before it reaches the screen. The software also does not force companies to create modified copies of electronic records to mask, scramble, or eliminate data. IBM says MAGEN could be used for healthcare firms that outsource customer service and claims processing functions to a third party, enabling customer service representatives to access patient records while protecting private medical information.
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IBM Claims Privacy Breakthrough for Cloud, Data |
by sparky3887
A lattice approach could be used to develop fully homomorphic encryption solutions, says IBM researcher Craig Gentry, a Stanford University Ph.D. candidate. Gentry’s research, which was recently published in the Proceedings of the 2009 ACM International Symposium on Theory of Computing, describes the technique as using an encryption scheme that can evaluate its decryption circuit. A fully homomorphic encryption system could potentially offer unlimited mathematical operations for analyzing encrypted information, compared with the limited operations of normal lattice encoding. Such operations conducted on encrypted text would be more efficient and affordable. Data security, cloud computing, and antispam efforts all stand to benefit from the ability to manipulate data while leaving it encrypted. “This is … one of the most remarkable crypto papers ever,” says PGP cryptographer Hal Finney. “I have to go back to Godel’s and Turing’s work to think of a comparable example.”
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IBM, Cray Lead Top 500 Supercomputer Rankings |
by sparky3887
The top two computers from last year are still the most powerful machines on the newest release of the Top 500 Supercomputer Sites list. The total combined performance of all the machines on the list reached 22.6 petaflops, nearly twice the combined performance of last year’s list. The top machine remains the IBM Roadrunner system at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, which has a performance of 1.105 petaflops. The Cray XT5 Jaguar system at Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory remains the second most powerful supercomputer, with a performance of 1.059 petaflops. The highest-ranking new supercomputer on the list is the JUGENE, an IBM BlueGene/P system in Germany at the Forschungszentrum Juelich research center. JUGENE, which runs 825.5 trillion calculations per second and is capable of a theoretical peak performance of more than a petaflop, took over the third spot on the list, displacing a NASA machine called Pleiades. Only two supercomputers in the top 10 are located outside the United States, JUGENE and Europa, a computer at the Juelich research center that is capable of 274.8 trillion calculations per second. The last machine on the list, which runs 17.1 trillion calculations per second, would have placed 274th only six months ago.
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IBM Investing $100 Million in Mobile Research |
by sparky3887
IBM has announced that it will spend $100 million during the next five years on a research project designed to make mobile technology and communications more efficient and easier to use. “Mobile devices are gradually becoming ubiquitous and helping us transcend many boundaries–geographical, economic, and social, among others,” says IBM Research-India director Guruduth Banavar. “With high penetration, a simple user interface, and significant cost advantage for end users, mobile telephony holds the future of communication and exchange of information for the enterprise.” IBM plans to focus on mobile enterprise enablement, emerging market mobility, and the enterprise to end user mobile experience. IBM already has developed a new technology called BlueStar, which automates the use of mobile phones and applications within a large enterprise. Meanwhile, IBM Research has established a pilot program in southern India, as part of their emerging market mobility effort, that will help consumers and small business owners find and share Internet information over their cell phones. To create an enterprise to end-user mobile experience, IBM plans to analyze consumer and business habits to enable the mobile Web to provide better personalized content. “Mobility and the associated analytics will change virtually every enterprise business process,” says IBM Telecom Research chief technologist Paul Bloom.
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How IBM Plans to Win Jeopardy! |
by sparky3887
IBM researchers are developing Watson, a natural-language processing system that will compete against human players in a game of Jeopardy! Demonstrations of the system will take place throughout the year, and a final televised match, hosted by Alex Trebek, will be held in 2010. Questions will be spoken aloud by Trebek, but fed into the machine as text during the competition. Watson project leader and IBM computer scientist David Ferrucci says the system divides questions into pieces and searches its databases for related knowledge and makes connections to create a result. Watson is not designed to search the Web. Whether or not Watson beats a human competitor, the project will further research in the field, says University of Washington computer scientist Dan Weld, who is participating in a U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) project focused on developing machines that understand natural language. “DARPA’s involvement will focus the research of many people at top universities and research labs to push on integrated systems that can actually read a broad array of documents,” Weld says. University of California, Berkeley computer scientist Marti Hearst says that natural-language processing researchers have made significant progress in the past 10 years. She says “pitting IBM’s Watson question-answering system against the top humans in a game of Jeopardy! is a fun way to publicize and showcase this progress.”
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