IBM 1998 Annual Report Download - page 36

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c o m p u t i n g t a k e s o n the m y s t e r i o u s…
Michelangelo’s second Pietà is a work of undeniable sorrow – said to be unique
in its ability to move people to tears. Perhaps that dark power overcame the
sculptor the day he took hammer in hand and smashed chunks out of the work
he intended as his tomb monument. He was stopped by a servant. The piece
was never completed, but was re p a i red by an undistinguished sculptor.
3 4
M E N WA L K E D on the moon three decades ago, but
there have remained myriad challenges beyond
the reach of technology - problems too expensive
or too time-consuming to be practically solved
with even the most powerful computers. But now
that's changing. A new capability began with Deep
Blue, a chess-playing supercomputer that could
consider 200 million possible moves per second,
coupled with analytical software so sophisticated
some said it began to mimic the workings of the
human mind. Today, the lessons of that chess
match are helping us create a new market oppor-
tunity we call Deep Computing.
This capability is now being applied to monu-
mental challenges - endeavors far more important
than chess: modeling financial markets and weath-
er patterns, challenges in biomedicine, data min-
ing and genomics. In the area of pharmaceutical
research, for example, Deep Computing allows
r e s e a r chers to reduce significantly the time
required to design new drugs.