IBM Working on Brain-Rivaling Computer

Obdurate writes "The first supercomputers to approach and even surpass the processing power of the human brain are to be built by IBM, under a $184M contract announced by the US Government yesterday. ASCI Purple and Blue Gene/L will be the fastest and most powerful machines built, with a combined capacity equal to the 500 best of todays computers."

Comments

No match for me...

[Anonymous Coward]

How often does it think about sex?

Re:No match for me...

[scott1853]

"In that particular moment, I was reconfiguring the warp field parameters, analyzing the collected works of Charles Dickens, calculating the maximum pressure I could safely apply to your lips, considering a new food supplement for Spot..."

Looks like it's only a low priority thread.

Brian's nothing special

[20goto10]

In fact he's a bit thick.

Thank god

[drunkmonk]

Now we can have computers that screw things up at a rate that rivals our own! Because seriously, we needed the competition.

Re:uhu

[e8johan]

I do 1-2 flops if I get easy numbers...

Re:uhu

[binaryDigit]

Easy, just run SPEC-brain.

Hooray!

[RomikQ]

Perhaps now we will get the Answer to Life, Universe, Everything!

And it damn better not be 42!

Well - the Orange Catholic Bible says:

[Etrigan_696]

Thou Shalt Not Make a Machine in the image of the mind of Man.

Somehow, I think that might be good advice.

Government brainpower?

[banda]

So a computer with the processing capacity of a human brain is to be put to work by the government? Does the US government have any actual experience in managing something as powerful as a human brain? How long before the computer realizes it could do much better in the private sector?

Re:uhu

[scotay]

That's before overclocking.

Business Proposal

[limekiller4]

Dear IBM,

I couldn't help but notice that you were hard at work developing a computer to rival the human brain to the tune of $184,000,000.

It just so happens that I have a human brain and I would be quite happy to let you use it for a tidy sum that is far below the aformentioned $184M.

Please give me a call at your earliest convenience to work out the details.

Thanks,
Jason

----[%snip]----

There is hope for the scarecrow after all!

[Joey7F]

We can make mechanical hearts so the tin man is taken care of. All that's left is to give the cowardly lion a lot of booze and suddenly Dorothy is off to see the wizard by herself.

--Joey

He he he

[ayjay29]

Imagine a bewul... --sssllllaaaaappppp!!!!

Re:uhu

[einer]

A phaser's energy pulse doesn't travel at c--if it did, we'd never see even a little streak in any scale small enough to see the crew or the enterprise. The directed-energy weapon has at least some mass to contain the energy.

Hate to be a dick, but.

It's people like you that make it hard for people like me to get laid. It's not just that you know a bunch of stuff about technology. It's that you know a bunch of stuff about technology that doesn't exist. For example, last week I was forced to break up a conversation that two of my cow-orkers were having on the relative merits and drawbacks of the different types of transporters used by the different races. Had that conversation continued, it might have made it impossible for any geek to EVER GET LAID AGAIN.

Just the hearing phrase "computer scientist" causes most women to stop ovulating immediately already. Let's not make things worse on ourselves.

Re:Processing power only part of the issue...

[deblau]

So the human brain totally and utterly is secondary to the computer already.

Ah, I beg to differ. Pour orange juice on a motherboard. Totally disfunctional in a few seconds. Now pour orange juice on your head.

Brain 1, Computers 0.