Metadot Corporation Goes Retro with the DasKeyboard

At this year's South by Southwest conference Metadot Corporation unveiled their very retro keyboard known as the DasKeyboard (German for "The Keyboard"?). Basically, what this device aims to do is bring back the touch and feel of typing on one of those old IBM Selectric typewriters. In fact, Metadot Corporation wanted to let users know just how retro the DasKeyboard feels by having a few of those old IBM Selectric typewriters at their South by Southwest booth.

The keys on the DasKeyboard are larger than most traditional keys with slightly concave tops. In addition to that, they make a rather enjoyable click when you press on them. The DasKeyboard also gives you some tactile feedback as well that provides you with a little assurance while typing.

Metadot Corporation also makes a similar keyboard to the DasKeyboard without the clicky noise, perfect for office settings, school settings or people who talk on the phone a lot while typing. There is even another version that doesn't have any labels on the keys whatsoever, something Metadot believes helps you type faster.

Regardless, if you are looking for some nostalgia or you are really into either retro keyboards, IBM Selectric typewriters or both, the DasKeyboard from Metadot Corporation may be the perfect thing for you. You can get the three different models when they launch later this year with the standard keyboard costing $129, the clickless keyboard costing $135 and the labeless keyboard costing $129.

Source: PC World - The DasKeyboard Brings Back the Feel of an IBM Selectric

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IBM Develops Computer Chip That Acts Like a Brain

Artificial Intelligence is something that science fiction movie directors love to utilize. Many directors have envisioned a future with robots and things that can act and behave like humans. However, something like that has always been out of reach for us, until now.



IBM recently introduced a new experimental neurosynaptic computer chip that emulates brain function in areas like cognition, perception and action. According to statements from IBM, these new chips will use algorithms and silicon circuitry in order to recreate spiking neurons and synapses in the brain.



These new chips will be embedded into cognitive computers. These computers will not be programmed to do certain actions, like the computers you and I use everyday. Instead, these devices will learn through experiences., create hypotheses and remember outcomes.



According to Project Leader for IBM Research Dharmendra Modha, "These chips are another significant step in the evolution of computers from calculators to learning systems, signaling the beginning of a new generation of computers and their applications in business, science and government."



The chips are being designed and created by IBM, who is working alongside multiple university collaborators. DARPA, or the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has already awarded $21 million in funding to IBM for the research as part of Phase 2 of the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics, or SyNAPSE (I hope they pay their anagram creators handsomely) project.



SyNAPSE is a project that was designed to create a computer system that will analyze complex information from multiple sensors and adapt itself automatically based on its interaction with the environment. Regardless, this technology is extremely impressive and, albeit, rather scary. If they are already making computer chips that can think, I wonder how long it will be before they make ones that will subsequently take over humanity? I guess we will just have to wait and see.



Source: Government Technology - IBM Computer Chip Mimics Human Brain Function

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'Jeopardy!' Contestants Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter Face Off Against Watson, the Super Computer from IBM

It will be a battle fit for the record books, one that will go down in history alongside Gettysburg and World War II. Only this one will not be fought with swords, guns or armies, but with little clickers and incredible knowledge. That's right, I am talking about the epic showdown set to take place on Jeopardy! this coming Monday which pits two of the show's biggest all-time winners, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, against Watson, a computer designed by IBM.

If you are not familiar with the popular game show that tests contestants' knowledge in a wide range of categories, then you will not know who Ken Jennings or Brad Rutter are. To put it simply, Jennings won a grand total of $3,022,700 on the show coming in second only to Brad Rutter who took home a total of $3,255,102. Needless to say, these gentlemen are extremely smart and ready to test their wits against the ultimate competitor, technology.

According to Stephen Baker, author of Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything, "The computer is fast on the buzzer, and if it's given certain specialties - it's good on facts about facts it can find and nail down - it could win. But humans are better with complex English, puns, nuances, so..."

This challenge was initiated by IBM after its scientists worked on Watson for four years. The outcome has already been determined as the show does not air live, but it is a secret. The episodes were taped on January 14th, 2011 and are set to air on Monday, February 14th, 2011 and conclude on Wednesday, February 16th, 2011. Alex Trebek, the host of Jeopardy! since 1984, isn't budging on giving away the result either.

"I think the guys have a slight edge on knowledge because their memories are good," says Trebek. "In terms of speed, it's no contest. Watson has the edge there. But it'll all come down to luck." Trebek also added that Watson could not see or hear him "so it was pointless to comment in his direction!"

Executive Producer of Jeopardy! Harry Friedman noted that putting the show together was definitely a challenge. Nobody has every done this before and the closest thing to be done like this was when chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov took on an IBM computer known as Deep Blue. He lost. According to Friedman, "Producing for people and with people is one thing, but dealing with a computer was another."

Friedman sees the competition as a "fascinating exhibition of technology" and not a tournament or a competition. "It is to be judged for what technology can do," he says. However, don't tell that to Jennings or Rutter. Jennings stated that he was spooked by the setting, which took place inside the labs of IBM. "No one was cheering for me. It was at their (IBM's) home arena. It was an away game for humanity."

Rutter, who has won the highest accumulative amount on Jeopardy! ever, says that he does not think humans are becoming outdated and that he enjoyed being a "guinea pig" playing against a computer. According to Rutter, "People watch the show to see the contestants and how they react. Watson will never jump up and down when he gets it right."

The contest is going to air this coming Monday, Feruary 14th, 2011. Check your local listings so you can tune in and see who is smarter, man or machine.

Source: USA Today - 'Jeopardy!' champs compete against computer

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Breakthrough by IBM May Bring Us Exascale Supercomputers

If you are one of the people out there that doesn't think that a supercomputer seems good enough, then you probably work at IBM. Researchers at IBM have just made a breakthrough in using light pulses to help accelerate the transfer of data between chips. If this works out like the people at IBM think it will, then it could quite possibly increase supercomputer performance by more than a thousand times.

This technology, dubbed CMOS Integrated Silicon Nanophotonics (I feel smarter already), integrates optical modules as well as electrical modules on a single piece of silicon. This allows electrical signals created at the transistor level to be transformed into light pulses, seemingly allowing chips to communicate faster according to IBM silicon photonics research scientist Will Green.

IBM believes that this new technology will lead to massive advances in supercomputer power. The fastest supercomputers we have around today max out at nearly 2 petaflops which, for us lay people, registers into two thousand trillion calculations per second. The photonics technology could increase this number to a staggering trillion million calculations per second. Yeah, a MILLION TRILLION calculations per second, otherwise known as an exaflop. This would help IBM achieve their goal of building an exascale computer by the year 2020.

According to Green, "In an exascale system, interconnects have to be able to push exabytes per second across the network. This is an interesting milestone for system builders who are looking at building exascale systems in 10 years."

The possibility of integrating multiple photonics modules onto a single substrate or onto a motherboard is here, according to Green. Newer supercomputers already use optical technology for chips in order to communicate. However, this usually occurs at the rack level and mostly over a single wavelength. This breakthrough will allow optical communication simultaneously at multiple wavelengths.

The good thing about this technology is that it can be manufactured on a standard chip production line. Another benefit is that it also needs no special tools, making it extremely cost-effective. The current demonstration used a 130-nanometer CMOS manufacturing node. However, IBM plans on pursuing integration into "deeply scaled sub-100 nanometer CMOS processes," according to Green.

The technology aims to replace copper wires. As you know, copper wires are widely used today for data transfer between chips. Optics can get a speed increase for distances as short as a few centimeters to as long as a few miles and even consumes less power. Eventually, IBM hopes to use optics for on-chip communication between transistors as well. According to Green, "There is a vision for the chip level, but that is not what we are claiming today."

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IBM Computer is Like a Human Brain...Sort of

At the Supercomputing Show in Portland, Oregon, IBM researchers announced that they are much closer to making a computer that can simulate the human brain. According to the researchers, they've reached a couple of major milestones in the project. One is performing the first real-time cortical simulation of the brain that goes beyond that of a cortex. The other is the development of an algorithm that maps the connections between cortical and subcortical areas in the brain, using IBM's Blue Gene super computing architecture.

The IBM researchers, working in collaboration with scientists from Stanford, the University of Wisconsin, Cornell, Columbia University Medical Center, and the University of California at Merced, would like to ultimately make a computer that can evaluate and act on data just like a human brain. The computer would also use similar amounts of space and energy as our brains do.

"Learning from the brain is an attractive way to overcome power and density challenges faced in computing today. As the digital and physical worlds continue to merge and computing becomes more embedded in the fabric of our daily lives, it's imperative that we create a more intelligent computing system that can help us make sense of the vast amount of information that's increasingly available to us, much the way our brains can quickly interpret and act on complex tasks," said Josephine Cheng, a Fellow and lab director of IBM Research-Almaden.

The research is part of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiative called Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Eletronics (SYNAPSE). DARPA recently awarded the researchers $16.1 million for Phase 1 of the project. The cortical simulator was run on the Dawn Blue Gene/P supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The supercomputer has 144TB of memory and 147,456 processors. The algorithm, which is called BlueMatter, allows scientists to experiment with mathematical hypotheses about how brain structure affects function when combined with the cortical simulator.

The researched say that as the amount of critical data and information continues to rapidly grow, businesses will have to find ways to adapt and make quick decisions. This "brain-like" computer will pull together information to help businesses come up with accurate, fast, and logical responses to data they receive.

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IBM Memory Faster and Cheaper

Memory is one of the biggest things people have to deal with in their computers. It seems everytime you turn around you are needing to upgrade your memory because you ran out or your computer crashed. This is a particular problem due to the price of some memory.

But the new memory from IBM plans to change everything we know about memory. According to England's university of Leeds physicist Christopher Marrow, "Racetrack memory will be a vast improvement over today's leading computer memory technology - flash and hard disk - which each have serious limitations." IBM shows it's new Racetrack memory, as it has been named, has been more reliable in recent tests than hard disks which hopefully will make frequent computer crashes obsolete.

Racetrack is also said to be cheaper than the current prices for hard disk memory. According to Marrows, "This technology will have the best of both worlds - cheap nano-size with huge memory in 3G phones, MP3 players, camcorders, and other devices. But more importantly there will be more sites that will be able to give away storage for free like YouTube and Gmail."

The main point of racetrack is speed, hence the name, and reliability. In hard disks, a motor-operated head, like the ones seen in record players, has to move to the data to read it. Data stored on the Racetrack is moved around on a wire which is pushed by spiraling magnetics. The moving parts in the hard disk makes it very susceptible to crashing. "Hard disks are so good because they are so cheap. But they are bad because of the moving parts." says Marrows.

The other memory device, flash memory, was created in 1980 by Toshiba. But, like hard disks, flash memory has its own problems as well. On the good side, flash memory has no moving parts and is a solid-state storage device. This makes it more reliable and faster than disks. However, on the flip side flash memory has a limited number of erase-write cycles it can perform before the memory capacity begins to deteriorate.

The thing for Racetrack is to have the speed and durability of flash memory combined with the hard disk affordability. According to Stuart Parkin, IBM fellow and inventor of Racetrack, "Racetrack will have cheap memory with the possibility of being one million times faster than hard disks without the risk of wearing out." Unlike hard disks, there is no need to search for information. According to Parkin, this will allow computers to boot up almost instantly.

And, like everything else in the world, Racetrack memory will use less energy making it green. Parkin says, 'The tremendous amount of storage, faster performance, and reduced energy requirements make it a nice green and smart technology."

One of the biggest, and smartest, innovations of Racetrack is that it is designed vertically which allows it to take up less room than the current memory. This will make it extremely less expensive due to the fact that the price of a chip is based on the space it uses. This design makes Racetrack the first 3-D memory allowing it to obtain more bits per transistor. According to Parkin, "This will allow us to take a chip and increase the transistor size 10 to 100 times, breaking Moore's Law." Moore's Law was founded by Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Intel. In 1965, Moore observed that the number of transistors per square inch on a circuit board will double every 18 months.

Some experts believe that Moore's law will hold true for another couple of decades. However, Parkin is hoping that his Racetrack will quash that ide in about 5 to 7 years. It is at this point Parkin hopes the Racetrack memory will be fully operational and available. Zeljko Zilic, associate professor of the Department of Electrical Computer Engineering at Montreal's McGill University, says that, "As technology enabler, racetrack fits within the 'universal memory' concept, where one type of memory could be used across the full spectrum, replacing the need for multiple types of internal memory. Currently, flash memory comes closest to the ideal, but disadvantages of flash will become more and more apparent."

The goal of IBM is not, in any way, to improve current technology. Their goal is to absolutely replace it all together. Racetrack has the potential to replace both hard disk and flash," Parkin says. "Our goal is to replace all flash memory as it will get rid of the concept of trading performance for cost."

While there are still a few years before Racetrack comes out, people are already waiting with high anticipation. The thought of completely replacing the memory system we have used for the past 60 years is no small feat. But with the brains at IBM, we can bet that they will give it their all to give us the best quality tehy can.

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