IBM Watson will become a development platform

Big Blue is to provide developers the super-computer so that they can develop new applications that take advantage of artificial intelligence capabilities of this machine.

Watson, the IBM supercomputer, was discovered by the largest number in 2011 after it had triumphed at Jeopardy against human opponents. After the victory of Deep Blue chess against Garry Kasparov in 1997, Watson's victory in a very complex game in its operation has highlighted the cognitive capabilities of the computer.

The initial configuration of Watson - the one that won the Jeopardy and whose design has lasted four years - is a machine that has 2900 cores and 16 TB of RAM. It is capable of performing 80 trillion operations (teraflops) per second. But since Watson was available in small models with 16 to 32 cores and 256 GB of memory. These are materials that IBM now wants to make available to developers through a cloud platform. 

Of course, it is possible to chain these different models to get more computing power as needed. The technical manager of the Watson project, Rob High, said in an interview with our colleagues from ComputerWorld: "We developed the technology evolves. She is now stable and mature enough to support an entire ecosystem. We believe it is possible to achieve something very special and we can not keep it just for us. " 

Call for VC 

Already, the company is working with a group of new partners in the cloud service and the first applications are expected to emerge soon. For example, Fluid is creating a program for the commercial function to guide customers in their choices. Similarly, several companies are working to create new centers of support and service fully controlled by Watson. 

The cloud platform Watson include a development kit, access to the API, the learning content and a marketplace. IBM would also have the opportunity to get closer to venture capital funds (Venture Capitalists / VC) to finance start-ups wishing to engage in the design of "Watson" programs. According to High, programming Watson poses no particular problems for those who have mastered the RESTful APIs. The fundamental difference lies in the understanding of the mode of operation of the computer "cognitive" than traditional programming methods.