IBM

IBM is the granddaddy in computing. Some might even call it the last surviving dinosaur. It has more or less survived lately on the server business but the rise of the cloud and cloud providers has seen its name overshadowed and almost forgotten. Now it’s adopting a strategy that may make it more enticing for those who want to move to the cloud without being locked in. The company has just announced a bid to acquire a fellow granddaddy, this time in the Linux space: Red Hat.

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IBM has trained an AI to help humans develop new fragrances for perfumes and other products. The system is called Philyra, and it involves machine learning algorithms that find new combinations of scents to produce novel fragrances. According to IBM, its AI can comb through existing combinations to spot "whitespaces" in which entirely new formulas can be formed.

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Thanks to popularity both in academic circles and commercial markets, AI research and technology have grown exponentially in the past few years. Now AI and neural networks can not only beat humans in games, they can also craft sometimes disturbing works of fiction. But one thing that AI have not yet been able to do sufficiently is to actually explain their “thinking” in plain language. IBM’s Project Debater can and it can be impressive or scary, depending on which side of the AI debate you’re on.

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A computer the size of a grain of rock salt is not only the world's smallest computer, IBM claims, but could be cheap enough to spread AI smarts and the blockchain ubiquitously. Shown off for the first time at IBM Think 2018, the company's annual research event, the tiny computer could have huge implications for making sure everything from medication to luxury goods are genuine rather than counterfeit.

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The folks at AIRBUS and IBM will bring a Crew Interactive MObile CompanioN (CIMON) disembodied robot head to the International Space Station this summer. This robot head was never really attached to a robot body - it was built specifically for the ISS - and a free-floating environment in which it'll function. This robot head will bring artificial intelligence to the ISS - almost like DAVID in Prometheus, or Ash in Alien. Not to worry!

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The researchers at the IBM Q lab have been busy this year; back in May they revealed a quantum computing platform with a 17 qubit processor, and now they've already topped that by a huge margin. The company has announced that they've developed an operational 50 qubit prototype processor, as well as a 20 qubit quantum system that will be available to its clients as a cloud service.

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My first impression of the Lenovo ThinkPad 25 is wholly positive - but it's not because this device is the latest and the greatest in high-tech innovation. Instead, this Lenovo notebook feels more like a fantasy - a good fantasy - in which the phrase "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" works in the world of devices that age out after 2 or 3 years of use. What we've got here is a real rarity - retro done right.

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The 50s called and they want their tapes back. Forget crystals, holograms, or even DNA. The storage solution of the future might come from the pass. And that’s not an exaggeration either. Sony and IBM have joined several of their technologies and innovations together in order to make a palm-sized magnetic tape cartridge capable of holding as much as 330 TB of data. An achievement considering that a comparable cartridge only holds 15 TB at most.

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Not too long ago, Samsung and Qualcomm boasted their Exynos 8895 and Snapdragon 835 processors, respectively. Both of these chips were manufactured using a 10 nm FinFET process, currently the smallest chip size in the consumer market. IBM’s Research Alliance, however, is proving that it has done one better. By halving the size but increasing performance and energy efficiency, IBM’s 5 nm chips has the potential to push the consumer electronics market forward, especially the IoT and even the smartphone markets, at an accelerated pace.

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By now it's a truism that data storage keeps getting smaller and smaller, but even with that knowledge IBM's latest advance is still jaw-dropping. Researchers at the company have managed to store data on a single atom, by turning it into the world's tiniest magnet. Admittedly, its single bit capacity isn't going to replace the USB drive in the bottom of your bag, but IBM says the potential is huge.

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A tech alliance composed of Google, Microsoft, Facebook, IBM, and Amazon has formed ‘Partnership on AI,’ a collective effort ‘to study and formulate best practices on AI technologies, to advance the public’s understanding of AI, and to serve as an open platform for discussion and engagement about AI and its influences on people and society.' The team states big goals for the partnership, not the least of which is helping the general public understand artificial intelligence and addressing concerns they may have about it.

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If you haven't heard about it yet, there's a new sci-fi thriller movie coming called Morgan, which focuses on a robot with advanced artificial intelligence (AI) that — to no surprise — rebels against its human creators. Appropriately, movie studio 20th Century Fox turned to IBM's Watson, a supercomputer AI capable of analyzing human personalities and emotions, researching cancer, and powering self-driving busses, to create its own version of the film's trailer.

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