Fastest Computer

It was not that many years ago that we were anxiously awaiting a computer that could do a million operations per second. Now we have the Sunway computer, which has a linkpack benchmark rate (the maximum speed at which it can operate) of 93 petaflops (a thousand trillion floating point operations per second). China has been building its next-generation high performance computer which will be at least 10 times faster than Sunway when the machine is finished during 2019.

IBM Watson Update

During the three years since the Jeopardy match on TV, Watson has become 24 times smarter and faster, improved performance by 2,400%, and is 90% smaller. IBM says it has shrunk Watson from the size of a master bedroom to the size of three stacked pizza boxes.

IBM says, "What we believe is happening right now, is that the amount of information being produced in the world is overrunning the ability of humans to consume it. When these kinds of things have happened in history, new tools emerged that helped humans deal with scale, such as in the industrial revolution." "I think as we look at knowledge-based professions today — health care, law, teaching — they're all being overrun with information. It's very difficult for people to keep up — and that leads inventors to come up with ways to help humans deal with that overload."

New Mini Computers

The drive is on for TVs to get larger and computers to get smaller. Last year Intel introduced Edison, a computer the size of a postage stamp. This year it introduced a new model called Curie, which is so small that it could be built into a button on a shirt.

Curie is based on the Quark SE core, Key Features:
• A low-power, 32-bit Intel® Quark™ SE SoC
• 384kB Flash memory, 80kB SRAM
• A low-power integrated DSP sensor hub with a proprietary pattern matching accelerator
• Bluetooth* Low Energy
• 6-axis combo sensor with accelerometer and gyroscope
• Battery charging circuitry.
It is for both the wearable fitness market and biometric and security applications, with additional tie ins to other brands like Fossil (watches) and Oakley (glasses). Unlike TVs, when it comes to computers, smaller is better.

Download vs. Upload

These words seems to confuse many people when discussing computer usage.

Download is taking something on the Web/Internet or a main company computer and putting it on your personal computer, such as programs or updates. Think of the Web/Internet as the big computer in the sky that drops stuff down to your device.

Upload is taking something on your computer and putting it on the Web/Internet or company computer, such as photos or files.