Wolfram Alpha Goes to R Systems for Horsepower
May 16, 2009
CNet’s Stephen Shankland wrote “Wolfram Alpha Gets Supercomputer Boost” here, and I think the story will super-boost the hopes that Wolfram Alpha’s search system will crush the Google. Rooting for a Google smasher is a bit of a pundit trend these days. With Wolfram Alpha supposed to be officially alive as I write this, I think the notion of the world’s 66th fastest supercomputer can make those Google haters experience an adrenaline rush. Mr. Shankland provides a link to the November 2008 list of supercomputers, and when I looked at the list I did not see the Google listed. The reason? Supercomputers are indeed fast, but they by themselves are not exactly what’s required to declaw Googzilla. Search and content processing is an interesting technical challenge and raw speed does not frighten to death the opposition. I learned from Mr. Shankland:
The system, called R Smarr, has 4,608 processor cores using 576 quad-core “Harpertown” Xeon machines, 65,536GB of memory, and high-speed InfiniBand data-transfer connections, according to the Top500 site and a Dell case study on the system (PDF). It also uses both the Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Microsoft Windows HPC Server operating systems, according to the Dell paper. Alpha requests will be served from five co-location facilities, Wolfram Research said. There actually are two supercomputers in the project, with nearly 10,000 processor cores total and hundreds of terabytes of hard drives.
I wonder if this commercial for Dell servers and Intel CPUs will indeed humble the arrogant Googlers? I have to keep reminding myself that dear old Google has been chipping away at the technical problems that keep most competitors from chewing into Google’s share of the Web search market. So what is it now? A decade for Google’s search effort? Wolfram Alpha has been in the search game for what now, a couple of years?
Should be interesting to see if the newcomer can do what Fast Search & Transfer, Microsoft, and Yahoo, among others, have been unable to do. If I were a betting man, I think Wolfram Alpha comes out of the gate with long odds.
Why?
CNet’s Tom Krazit reported here “Wolfram Alpha’s Launch Delayed Amid Glitches”. Hmmm.
Stephen Arnold, May 16, 2009
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