Deep Blue to battle cancer
By: Nestor E. Arellano, IT World Canada
(04/07/2006)
An IBM supercomputer directly related to the famous Deep Blue that battled chess grand master Gary Kasparov in 1997 has recently been recruited to aid Canadian researchers in the fight against cancer.
One of the biggest challenges in our research is being able to sort through a large volume of data.Igor Jurisicaprofessor of computer science and biophysics at the University of TorontoText
The Life Sciences Discovery Centre of the University Health Network (UHN) in Toronto is using an IBM eServer p595 supercomputer to analyze protein interactions.
These interactions are vital to the understanding of cancer biology at the molecular level. The process is crucial to charting a tumour’s progression and ultimately developing treatment.
The UHN centre received the supercomputer along with IBM’s WebSphere Information Integrator server application and DB2 database software under Big Blue’s Shared University Grant program. The package is worth more than US$2.5 million.
“One of the biggest challenges in our research is being able to sort through a large volume of data,” said Igor Jurisica, a scientist with the Ontario Cancer Institute of the UHN. Jurisica is also a professor of computer science and biophysics at the University of Toronto.
Here is the full story.
This is great news for humans.
That’s some pretty cheese journalistic hyperbole. The fact that this computer is made by IBM is a pretty tenuous connection to Deep Blue.
Wasn’t it dismantled?
After the Kasparov match the Deep Blue parallel architecture was put to other uses, such as weather modeling. Presumably this machine uses newer, faster processors and a newer bus to connect processors, but it probably is “directly related” as the story states.
If deep Blue can defeat cancer, I may find a place in my heart to forgive the blasted thing for defeating Kasparov.
“If deep Blue can defeat cancer, I may find a place in my heart to forgive the blasted thing for defeating Kasparov.”
Psst! It’s NOT Deep Blue.