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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."
After we moved from MySQL to PostgreSQL, we saw similar performance improvements. Then we doubled our performance again when we moved to FreeBSD from Linux. We never expected a few software changes to have such a big impact, but were happy that we could reuse all of our existing hardware.
I find it interesting on a philosophical level to think about what computing is doing to us. CPU's require energy to perform calculations. Then there's the system overhead, a fixed energy cost that included the assembly and set up costs, and the running and maintenance/replacement costs. Now obviously humans have been almost taken out of the equation. Where before you had thousands of workers all requiring to be fed, all requiring furniture and space and light and reasonably cool/warm air, all of them needing transport, and all of them victims of entropy and therefore needing accident and health insurance, taking sick days, etc. We've come a long way.
Now you just need the brains. Brains to design the system, brains to drive the investigation, and brains to try to improve the algorithms the system uses. To save even more energy. Of course eventually physical limits will be reached. There's no escaping the fundamental laws of our universe. But the energy "savings" from doing it the "old way" is translated into the ability to essentially brute-force the universe with raw computing power. Er, but what are we going to do with all the people who just don't "have" the brains? They get a free ride?
Sorry I'm waxing philosophical today.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
As a computer engineer, I'm fascinated by the potential improvements in performance.
As a wired citizen, I'm terrified of the additional data-mining capabilities this will provide to our corporate overlords.
We are the 198 proof..
Man, the energy industry doesn't like it when five more people start riding bikes. They dispatch armies of lobbyists to Washington if there's even a hint that the EPA mileage standards are going to increase by three miles per gallon.
You best believe they're going to pay attention if computers become more energy efficient. You know how much of the nation's energy bill is because of computer use?
Me neither, but I bet it runs into a whole bunch of money.
You are welcome on my lawn.