[ Thanks to Steven J.
Vaughan-Nichols for this link. ]
“It’s looking pretty good for Watson, IBM’s
Linux-powered computer cluster, as IBM engineers get it ready for
its mid-February showdown with Jeopardy’s all-time champs, Ken
Jennings and Brad Rutter. Watson has already won a practice round
and Bodog, the online gambling company and odds-maker has made
Watson the favorite at 5/6. Even if Watson doesn’t win, the mere
fact that it can compete at this level is amazing.“How can Watson do it? Here’s what I’ve learned about Watson’s
hardware and software in the last few days.“According to David Davidian, an IBM Senior System Architect,
“Watson is a massively parallel system based on the IBM POWER7 750
in a standard rack mounted configuration.” It can run AIX, IBM’s
house-brand Unix; IBM I; and Linux. To compete on Jeopardy Watson
is running Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.”