X-Message-Number: 12925 Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1999 08:53:05 -0600 (CST) From: RHA <> Subject: Thoughts on "Blue Gene" The proposed computer "Blue Gene" strikes me as a "Glomar Explorer" type trojan horse. As a "BOTE" calculation, consider: (1) 100,000,000,000 Neurons in the brain (2) x 2,000 (Maximum possible firings per neuron =1 second/0.0005 [minimum refractory period]) --------------- (3) 200,000,000,000,000 Maximum neural events per second (ie., "operations") (4) 1,000,000,000,000,000 "Blue Gene" operations per second Therefore, as described, at the neural level, "Blue Gene" would perform 5x more operations per second than the human brain [5 = (4)/(3)]. Conclusion: Blue Gene ain't no protein folder. One news report said "...IBM's Blue Gene will consist of more than 1 million processors, each capable of 1 billion operations per second, the Armonk, N.Y.-based company said. That would make it 2 million times more powerful than today's personal computers..." That's one quadrillion (US, not british) operations per second. You really think IBM's gonna waste that on protein folding? Feel free to correct my "BOTE" guesstimate if it's fundamentally flawed. I think I've overstated the number of ops/sec for the brain by at least a factor of four, but that okay for the basic point. rha Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=12925