Hardware

Part of the Tianhe-2 supercomputer (Photo courtesy Top500. All rights reserved)

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The Tianhe-2 supercomputer, developed by the National University of Defense Technology in China, has been recognized as the world’s most powerful in the Top500 ranking updated on June 2013. By the end of the year it’s expected to be installed at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzho, China. With its 33,862.7 TFlop/s, it nearly doubled the computing power of Titan, the former king of supercomputers. Its computing power peak can in theory reach 54,902.4 TFlop/s.

IBM Watson Solutions VP Stephen Gold interacts with the system (Photo courtesy IBM. All rights reserved)

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IBM launched Watson Engagement Advisor, a new version of its artificial intelligence technology system Watson. Two years after winning the quiz Jeopardy!, IBM Watson will now be used for customer service, even handling conversations with users understending their questions and providing them with adequate answers via chat, e-mail, SMS and smartphone apps.

128 qubit quantum processor by D-Wave Systems (Photo D-Wave Systems)

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Last week Google announced the launch of the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab together with NASA’s Ames Research Center and the Universities Space Research Association (USRA). This laboratory will host a quantum computer created by D-Wave Systems, the D-Wave Two model that will be used for various scientific research, particularly on machine learning. The ultimate goal is to build new models for problems such as climate change.

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Google, in collaboration with other companies such as BlackBerry, EarthLink and Red Hat, submitted to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) a series of comments. Their request is of a greater vigilance against the phenomenon of “patent trolling”, which is the use of patents for the sole purpose of restricting competition and to obtain money through lawsuits or through agreements following threats of such action.