Reddit did an AMA

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/fnfg3/by_request_we_are_the_ibm_research_team_that/


On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 10:30 PM, Jim Doherty <[email protected]>wrote:

> On 2/17/2011 3:51 PM, Luther Woodrum wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 17 Feb 2011, Cranky Frankie wrote:
>>
>>  - When you see Watson being rack after rack of servers, for an
>>> old-timer like me who remembers the mainframes, it's still kind of a
>>> shock.
>>>
>>
>> Not so much any more.  Even the dinky little 12 core machine I am putting
>> together can have up to 256G of memory.  But I'm only starting with 16G,
>> and upgrade later to 64G when it's time to start running production.
>>
>> Speaking of memory, in 1987, when I retired from IBM, only one
>> mainframe in Pok had more than 16MB of memory, and it was 32MB.
>> None of the other msinframes had more than 16MB.
>>
>> On my 80287 pc, I had 16MB of memory, and ran APL, which used it all
>> in one workspace.  I was able to read in 150,000 line listing files
>> and do string seraches on the entire collection.  It saved me an
>> enormous amount of time.
>>
>>  - You wonder if the OS was AIX, their version of Unix, or something else.
>>>
>>
>> AIX 6.x drives the powerpc.
>>
>>
> NCSA picked Linux for their  Blue Waters POWER7 super computer.
>
>
> Jim
>
>
>  - Clearly they had everything indexed and in core, but you wonder what
>>> the database architecture was: - relational as in some version of DB2,
>>> or hierarchical like IMS or even XML, or a linked list, or something
>>> built one-off for this like Google's "Big Table"
>>>
>>
>> I don't think you will find any linked lists in there.
>> The 100+ powerpcs have a combined memory of about 15 TB.
>> It is all in memory.
>>
>> Each powerpc, at least 32 core, has at least 256G of memory.
>>
>> Lex
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>> Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm)                         MHVLS Auditorium
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>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group                  http://mhvlug.org
> http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug
>
> Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm)                         MHVLS Auditorium
>  Mar 2 - MHVLUG 8th Anniversary - Show and Tell
>  Apr 6 - Introduction to IPv6
>  May 4 - Inkscape
>



-- 
     Regards,
     Jesse K. Ziter
     JKZfixme.com
     (845) 476-8094
_______________________________________________
Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group                  http://mhvlug.org
http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug

Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm)                         MHVLS Auditorium
  Mar 2 - MHVLUG 8th Anniversary - Show and Tell
  Apr 6 - Introduction to IPv6
  May 4 - Inkscape

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