IBM Claims Breakthrough Energy-Efficient Algorithm

jitendraharlalka sends news of a claimed algorithmic breakthrough by IBM, though from the scant technical detail provided it's hard to tell exactly how important the development might be. IBM apparently presented its results yesterday at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics conference in Seattle. The breathless press release begins: "IBM Research today unveiled a breakthrough method based on a mathematical algorithm that reduces the computational complexity, costs, and energy usage for analyzing the quality of massive amounts of data by two orders of magnitude. This new method will greatly help enterprises extract and use the data more quickly and efficiently to develop more accurate and predictive models. In a record-breaking experiment, IBM researchers used the fourth most powerful supercomputer in the world... to validate nine terabytes of data... in less than 20 minutes, without compromising accuracy. Ordinarily, using the same system, this would take more than a day. Additionally, the process used just one percent of the energy that would typically be required."

Comments

just trying to be relevant

[pydev]

Sounds like someone found a faster algorithm (maybe just constants), and since energy efficiency is the hot new thing, "faster" is now translated into "saves energy".

Re:just trying to be relevant

[zippthorne]

In a post scarcity economy? Yeah, everyone gets a free ride. Everything changes if you can get to that.

Re:just trying to be relevant

[Mashdar]

Corrcted:

One fatal flaw with humanity is that it leads to runaway wealth and poverty distribution.

This is not a new problem. Once you can eliminate the humans, come talk to me.

Awesome!

[daceaser]

I'll buy three!

What do they do exactly?

Clarification?

[Twinbee]

Can someone please clarify exactly what they've achieved here? All I hear is that they can somehow sift through large quantities of data much quicker. What kind of data? What are they trying to extract? And for what end?

TFA is worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

This would be a real story if it gave implementation details, but it doesn't even tell us what the algorithm does; therefore it's totally worthless. Get this crap off the front page.

Re:TFA is worthless

[belthize]

Implementation details are not equivalent to merely clarifying what the heck it does. In the case of cold fusion it's pretty clear what it does: cold fusion. In the case of this press release it does "algorithmy things to your data really fast".

Re:Green-washing

[gandhi_2]

With faster algorithms, the machine can just get more jobs done in the same amount of time. But the jobs will just keep coming, so the energy use never changes.

Or are the new algorithms SO fast that all processing needs of humanity will be done in a week, thereby allowing us to turn off all supercomputers? Now that would save energy.

Re:I'd expect this

[momerath2003]

The funny thing about energy efficiency is that it saves companies money, but they get to spin it as being "green." [For example, when grocery stores eliminate plastic bags to be "green," what they really mean is they're eliminating bags to be "cheap."] If this new algorithm has no penalty associated with it, then it saves time and energy, therefore money and "the environment."

Techniques from parameterized algorithms?

[AlgorithMan]

ZOMFG!!!! PNOIES!!!!

• Kernelzation + Memoization
• Branching-Vector minimization

regularly produce this magnitude of algorithm speedup...

Re:Mixed emotions...

[magsol]

And as an interested academic, I'm disappointed that this (so far) appears to be nothing more than a marketing ploy.