HEADLINES
JOBS
COM:PORT
POLICY POLICE
ARCHIVES

Deep Blue masters looking for new work

IBM has identified molecular dynamics, financial risk assessment and decision support/data mining as areas where it wants to develop commercial applications of the RS/6000 technology, he said.

T O D A Y

• Pots & Pans • Deep Blue's new job • Professor Motorola • Compuware-Microland • Intel and Sun ink deal

Speaking at the International Conference on High-Performance Computing in Bangalore on Friday, Tan said human domain expertise, combined with the machine's computing capability and speed could offer "solutions for humanity''.

Tan recently led the Deep Blue team in a highly successful historical match against world chess champion Garry Kasparov. For this accomplishment, he was given a special IBM corporate award for the development of Deep Blue.

Speaking on the historic man-machine match, he said: "We had prepared Deep Blue to play like a grandmaster. Garry, on the other hand, had prepared himself only to play a faster machine.'' The general strategy deployed in the historic man-machine match where the IBM Deep Blue chess computer beat the world chess champion was to combine domain expertise (chess knowledge of human grandmaster) with the speed of the computer, according to him.

Tan said after losing to Gary Kasparov in 1996 (when Deep Blue first played the chess champion), his team discovered that human domain expertise was an important aspect that had to be taken care of.

The Deep Blue machine is the power behind Pathfinder, the unmanned, space vehicle currently on Mars. The RS/6000, which was code named Deep Blue during its development, acquired a personality of its own during the game with Kasparov.

Apart from playing cerebral games and participating in space travel, Deep Blue also helps in locating oil wells and in weather forecasting for the meteorological department.

By simulating conditions, the four-year-old machine helps reduce actual nuclear test explosion.

The other functions performed by it include business computing and carrying out clinical tests for drug companies and in the defence sector. The RS/6000's SP parallel processing capability enhances computing performance.

The SP system, which offers power of up to 512 processors, has been installed in over 1,000 locations world-wide.

- Compiled from the Indian media

Tell us what you think of this story