Jeopardy computer only uses a bit of its memory

If you've been following the human vs computer Jeopardy shows on TV in the US recently, you've met the IBM supercomputer that is winning games. To make the humans feel better, it might be nice to know that the computer's responses are supported by 90 servers and a network-attacked storage cluster with 2.16B of data (I read this in CIO).

The interesting tidbit is that the computer only uses about 1TB to process its answers to the Jeopardy questions. Which is, apparently, all it needed to answer with in the tree second threshold and trounce its human competitors. Apparently, the computer's performance against its human counterparts gave Jeopardy its highest ratings in quite some time. I did not tune in, but am intrigued that so many people did.

Here are some memory stats on the supercompter, or "Watson" as it is dubbed:

• 90 servers with 160GB of DRAM each
• Every time the computer boots, 10.8 TB of data is automatically loaded into Watson's 15 TB of RAM

IBM's video on this is really worth watching, which includes interviews with Watson's design team as they worked through its bugs:


So, did you tune in? What did you think?