IBM's "Watson" technology, released in 2009, put a face on what the massive processing power of a mainframe could mean in the real world. Now, with IBM's new Power8 chip, Watson coud grow even smarter.
IBM launched Watson on its Power7 chip, according to Jeff Steucheli, with IBM's Power team, during a presentation Monday at the Hot Chips conference Monday at Stanford University. But according to IBM's own internal metrics, the Power8 is between two and three times faster than the Power7, launched in 2010. (An intermediary chip, the Power7+, was launched in 2012.)
IBM maintains a specialized line of chips, known as the Power line. Most of the supercomputing and server world have moved to Intel's Xeon processor, however, making Watson both an important technical as well as marketing tool to show off the power of Power.
Watson, of course, trounced the top players in the TV quiz show, Jeopardy. Watson was later adapted for front-end customer-service applications, financial analysis, and even has its sights set on smartphones.
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