You heard it here first
Well, first of all, I must clarify one thing, This is my personal point of view not my employer's or anyone else's.
This is my reaction to a Press conference that was given, so don't think I am sitting here giving away company secrets. I am just giving you the info hot-off-the oven, because I doubt that the sentinel or the palmbeach post can beat me to it.
Anyway, on to the good stuff.
IBM and Scripps announced project Checkmate. In which they plan on merging Biological and Chemical Research with the latest and greatest of Computing Technology, The Blue Gene Supercomputer.
A quick thing about The Blue Gene. It runs at 200 Teraflops wich is 200 times 10 to the 12th power. To match that number of operations per second, every human being on earth must do about 30,000 ops per second. Or put in another way, if one person could do one op per second, it would take about 20 million years* to do what the Blue Gene can do in one second. Ok on about project Checkmate.
The reason for that name is bacuase they are going to study the way viruses act and behave and predict their future mutations. This will prepare scientist with information about a new strain of a virus before it appears. This, of course is easier said than done, but in theory they are going to transform chemical equations into mathematical models that will help fight viruses.
I think that is pretty damn neat. To think that they will be doing that here in South Florida is pretty good for us. We need a project like checkmate to encourage people to study these fields. Maybe it will help the overall IQ of South Floridians which, as we all know, can use a little boost.
So, come, scientist from all over! Join me and thousands others at I-95 where every hour is rush hour!
Welcome indeed, to paradise on Earth. Bring your wallet. Se habla Español
*Aproximately, I know you don't want me to break out my calculator.
Palm Beach Post
The sun sentinel
4 comments:
LOL... I love you Jose. I can always count on a laugh when I'm reading your posts. So, easier said than done is right. I don't think the challenge is getting a computer to run as fast as you guys/gals have. The real challenge is developing a software program that will somehow how predict the unpredictable. Maybe that's just my ignorance, or maybe they have ways of predicting mutations, I don't know. It sounds pretty cool though. Say, can they get to work on something more problematic right now, like... AIDS, Influenza, or Cancer? Fuck the bird flu. Daddy needs a new pair of lungs!
P.S. I didn't mean to belittle your computer chip. That's pretty impressive. I bet you need an air conditioning system the size of my house to keep it cool.
Jonathan,
I love you too, sorry I didn't get you those chocolates two days ago..
Anyway, you're right, this project is trying to predict the unpredictable, which is why is called "project Checkmate" it starts by scanning all the known data about the virus, past and presents states, mutations, configuration or whatever those crazy scientist call it, then, you analyze that data to come up with a pattern, with that pattern, it is possible to predict how it will mutate next.
About the Cancer and aids, ditto, check out this link and this one
Love
Jose
Now, I seriouly have to go back to work before I suddenly find myself with a lot of time in my hands to blog.
And you are right, the air conditioning that Blue Gene uses is pretty advanced, they line up 20 interns with this big fans and they have to hold it all day long, I gotta say I am impressed with the cost-effectiveness of the whole scheme.
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