Watson Weekly: How Much Is That Hardware?
November 17, 2015
I read “IBM Watson Gains Processing Boost with Nvidia and Power8 Hardware.” The write up called to my attention how much computing horsepower is needed to make Watson usable.
IBM has its nifty Power8 hardware. To buttress, shore up, or help out, IBM is also using Nvidia chips.
The write up says:
IBM has now integrated Nvidia’s Tesla accelerated graphics platform into Watson’s hardware foundations in the form of Tesla K80 GPUs coupled with IBM’s Power8 processors commonly used to power servers that support enterprise and scalable cloud infrastructure.
Well and good.
The problem seems to be that as the volume of content to be processed goes up, the hardware demands will rise as well. In a world of Big Data, which IBM is embracing, what customer will be able to foot the bill for continuous hardware expansion.
What about the cloud?
IBM will have to expand its data centers. As it gets more customers for Watson, the expansion will be required. Without fast content processing, the customers may go elsewhere.
In short, Watson makes use of traditional computing methods. Those methods impose what Google and others have called the credit card debt of high technology.
In short, Watson may be too costly for IBM to scale if the customers balk at the IBM fees.
Stephen E Arnold, November 17, 2015
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