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

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