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Showing posts with label ibm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ibm. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Watson on Jeopardy
Very impressive -- until Tuesday night's Final Jeopardy answer! Since when is Toronto a U.S. city?
Friday, June 18, 2010
What Is I.B.M.’s Watson?
“Toured the Burj in this U.A.E. city. They say it’s the tallest tower in the world; looked over the ledge and lost my lunch.”
"This is the quintessential sort of clue you hear on the TV game show “Jeopardy!” It’s witty (the clue’s category is “Postcards From the Edge”), demands a large store of trivia and requires contestants to make confident, split-second decisions. This particular clue appeared in a mock version of the game in December, held in Hawthorne, N.Y. at one of I.B.M.’s research labs. Two contestants — Dorothy Gilmartin, a health teacher with her hair tied back in a ponytail, and Alison Kolani, a copy editor — furrowed their brows in concentration. Who would be the first to answer?
Neither, as it turned out. Both were beaten to the buzzer by the third combatant: Watson, a supercomputer."
Read the entire NY Times article by clicking on the title bar.
"This is the quintessential sort of clue you hear on the TV game show “Jeopardy!” It’s witty (the clue’s category is “Postcards From the Edge”), demands a large store of trivia and requires contestants to make confident, split-second decisions. This particular clue appeared in a mock version of the game in December, held in Hawthorne, N.Y. at one of I.B.M.’s research labs. Two contestants — Dorothy Gilmartin, a health teacher with her hair tied back in a ponytail, and Alison Kolani, a copy editor — furrowed their brows in concentration. Who would be the first to answer?
Neither, as it turned out. Both were beaten to the buzzer by the third combatant: Watson, a supercomputer."
Read the entire NY Times article by clicking on the title bar.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
"Researchers at IBM will have two papers published in the journal Science this week detailing how it may be possible to use individual atoms, or groups of atoms, to store data or act as a transistor.
The work revolves around harnessing magnetic anisotropy, a property of atoms. Something is anisotrophic if it has different values when it faces in different directions. If a substance is anisotrophic and the orientation of the substance can be controlled, then the orientation--the theory goes--of the atom can come to represent the 1s and 0s of digital computing.
Potentially, atomic-level storage or switching could result in incredibly tiny computers. With atomic storage, you could fit a 1,000 trillion bits of information in an iPod, according to IBM estimates.
In the first paper, titled "Large Magnetic Anisotropy of a Single Atomic Spin Embedded in a Surface Molecular Network," researchers described how they arranged individual iron atoms with a scanning tunneling microscope on a specially prepared copper surface. With the atoms in place, the researchers were then able to measure the strength and orientation of the anisotrophy of the individual atoms.
The second paper, meanwhile, describes the performance of a switch created from two hydrogen atoms inside an organic molecule called naphthalocyanine. Researchers have made single-atom switches before, but the molecules had a tendency to change shapes. This problem has not, so far, surfaced in the IBM molecular switch. (Interestingly, IBM discovered the properties of naphthalocyanine by accident. It was studying the molecule in a separate project, on vibration.)"
The work revolves around harnessing magnetic anisotropy, a property of atoms. Something is anisotrophic if it has different values when it faces in different directions. If a substance is anisotrophic and the orientation of the substance can be controlled, then the orientation--the theory goes--of the atom can come to represent the 1s and 0s of digital computing.
Potentially, atomic-level storage or switching could result in incredibly tiny computers. With atomic storage, you could fit a 1,000 trillion bits of information in an iPod, according to IBM estimates.
In the first paper, titled "Large Magnetic Anisotropy of a Single Atomic Spin Embedded in a Surface Molecular Network," researchers described how they arranged individual iron atoms with a scanning tunneling microscope on a specially prepared copper surface. With the atoms in place, the researchers were then able to measure the strength and orientation of the anisotrophy of the individual atoms.
The second paper, meanwhile, describes the performance of a switch created from two hydrogen atoms inside an organic molecule called naphthalocyanine. Researchers have made single-atom switches before, but the molecules had a tendency to change shapes. This problem has not, so far, surfaced in the IBM molecular switch. (Interestingly, IBM discovered the properties of naphthalocyanine by accident. It was studying the molecule in a separate project, on vibration.)"
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