Top TechTop Tech #108: Supercomputer Care, Flying Facebook, Faster Memory
Important innovations in science and technology, every day
By Paul Worthington
Friday’s Top Tech:
• Supercomputer to calculate care for chronic patients
• Facebook to fly its own aero-Internet
• 1,000–X faster memory to boost computing performance
Supercomputer to calculate care for chronic patients
Predictive analytics and cognitive computing may “transform care management services for patients with chronic disease.”
CVS Health and IBM say health care practitioners could “quickly and easily gain insights from an unprecedented mix of health information sources such as medical health records, pharmacy and medical claims information, environmental factors, and fitness devices to help individuals stay on track with their care and meet health goals.”
CVS Health and IBM are partnering to use “cognitive computing capabilities that interact in natural language, read and understand vast amounts of information, and continuously learn.”
Chronic diseases such as hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity are the leading cause of death and disability in the U.S. and represent 86 percent of the nation’s $2.9 trillion in annual health spending, the companies add.
IBM’s Watson “is the first commercially available cognitive computing capability representing a new era in computing,” the company claims. It “analyzes high volumes of data, understands complex questions posed in natural language, and proposes evidence-based answers. Watson continuously learns, gaining in value and knowledge over time, from previous interactions.”
Facebook to fly its own aero-Internet
It’s not enough to have the world’s largest social network: Facebook is also expanding its potential market by bringing Internet access to outlying areas that lack infrastructure…
….By flying a fleet of drones overhead.
And it’s not just a notion with fancy CGI graphics: the company says it has a working prototype ready to launch: Aquila.
A full-scale version of the high-altitude, long-endurance aircraft designed by Facebook’s aerospace team in the UK “is now complete and ready for flight testing.”
Aquila has a carbon-fiber frame will be able to circle a remote region for up to 90 days, beaming connectivity down to people from an altitude of 60,000 to 90,000 feet.
Facebook says more than 4 billion people are not yet online, and 10 percent of the world’s population lives in remote locations “and the kinds of infrastructure technologies used everywhere else — things like fiber-optic cable, microwave repeaters and cell towers — may be a challenge to deploy cost-effectively in these regions.”
1,000–X faster memory to boost computing performance
“Big Data” requires better memory: Intel and Micron have developed a new class of non-volatile memory, “creating the first new memory category in more than 25 years” they claim.
The 3D XPoint technology brings non-volatile memory speeds up to 1,000 times faster than standard NAND memory introduced in 1989.
The companies say they invented “unique material compounds” and an architecture for a memory technology that is 10 times denser than conventional memory — “a three-dimensional checkerboard where memory cells sit at the intersection of word lines and bit lines, allowing the cells to be addressed individually.”
Micron adds that the new non-volatile memory “is a revolutionary technology that allows for quick access to enormous data sets and enables entirely new applications.”
Here is the full announcement.
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