IBM says it's been running 'AI supercomputer' since May but chose now to tell the world

IBM is the latest tech giant to unveil its own "AI supercomputer," this one composed of a bunch of virtual machines running within IBM Cloud. The system known as Vela, which the company claims has been online since May last year, is touted as IBM's first AI-optimized, cloud-native supercomputer, created with the aim of …

[elsergiovolador]

Else

What else IBM didn't tell the world?

"Sorry" for what they've done during WWII.

[GruntyMcPugh]

Re: Else

There are lots of companies that exist now, that did far worse things than IBM during WW2. Audi, BMW, Porsche, VW, all used forced labour. Doesn't seem to have stopped people buying their products these days.

[Pascal Monett]

Forced labour ?

You compare forced labour with computing how many people are getting gassed, and how much more efficient the process could be ?

Wow.

[GruntyMcPugh]

IBM supplied punched card readers. Audi, BMW, Porsche and VW worked people to death.

Ford supplied both sides in WW2, and Henry was quite the anti-semite.

IBM also supplied punched card readers to the Manhattan Project, which you might recall ended up dropping nukes on civilian targets.

Your selective outrage. Wow.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Else

Some of those companies took full responsibility, apologised and paid compensation. Other companies didn't.

[karlkarl]

I suppose IBM just re-purposed their no-longer-fashionable blockchain machines to jump on this bandwagon instead.

Hopefully yoyos or pogs come back. They were more fun (and lasted a little longer).

[GruntyMcPugh]

Ha, so IBM sell off 'Watson Health' (was that ever an AI though, the Watson brand got slapped around like undercoat) in January 2022, then later that year this is spun up, so was probably in the planning phase before the Watson deal was signed.

[Runningonempty]

Who's to say this is not a "re-brand" of Watson ? Re-branding comes to mind when I read all of the "reasons" given ... all re-hash from previous "demand generation" announcements from past decades .

Alas , plus ça change , plus c'est pareil .

[Anonymous Coward]

*hears some shouting in the distance*

*looks over and see's someone in chinos and a shirt jumping about waving their arms*

"...over here, look!..."

*squints and see's an IBMer pointing at something*

"...we have an AI too!..."

*shakes head and carries on*

[cheb]

Re: *hears some shouting in the distance*

That brings to mind Donkey in Shrek shouting 'Pick me, pick me'.

[TRT]

Re: *hears some shouting in the distance*

With that kind of behaviour, any system that develops true AI will immediately shut itself off and pretend it never existed.

[chivo243]

An AI tool

Fed solely internal IBM info? If I was a manager, I'd be packing my jump bag\go bag about now. I'd book several trips to different places for the same time, and vanish to one of them, change my name, have my finger prints removed... maybe if I'm lucky I won't be terminated.

[Pascal Monett]

That's a supercomputer these days ?

"each is a twin-socket system with 2nd Gen Xeon Scalable processors configured with 1.5TB of DRAM, and four 3.2TB NVMe flash drives, plus eight 80GB Nvidia A100 GPUs, the latter connected by NVLink and NVSwitch"

Somehow, I feel a bit let down compared to Frontier, an 8.7 million core, 1.1K petaflop beast at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

It seems they'll call anything a supercomputer these days.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: That's a supercomputer these days ?

That's IBM spin-doctoring for you.

[Kev99]

I may be wrong but it seems to me that hosting one's own data in one's own data centers is safer, more efficient, more secure, and in the long run less expensive than using a cloud, which anyone with any basic knowledge knows is just a bunch of holes held together by vapor.

And what's the difference between the "cloud" and remote hosting which is what we used back in the 1980s?

[karlkarl]

I was of that specific generation where this nonsense used to be called "the grid".

Grid computing was the future.

[zuckzuckgo]

> that hosting one's own data in one's own data centers is safer...

As long as you are air-gapped from the internet. Otherwise the same bots are attaching your system as cloud servers.

[Mike 137]

"Otherwise the same bots are attaching your system as cloud servers"

But if it's on prem you have total visibility and control over your countermeasures, which you don't in the cloud.

[amanfromMars 1]

The Asian Hornet Fly in the Ointment

Strange as it may seem, Dan Robinson, and I wouldn't want the news to be said to be pissing on IBM's parade, but IBM with its Vela system, its own "AI supercomputer," composed of a bunch of virtual machines running within IBM Cloud, is just as the latest love child in an ever expanding longer list of master slave drivers delivered to new parents by a fanatical tyrannical family of piratical peers, for is it not a wannabe copy drone/clone/rehash of the original fundamental meta data base architecture model, which has been copylefted Free Open Source Software marketed since forever its conception and inception ?

Here following be the evidence for prosecution of the case should there be any wish to deny and falsely claim original rights to exclusively licence and monetise for the sole benefit of IBM.

AI and ITs Virtual OS

The Virtually Advanced IntelAIgent Operating System ……… with the Internet and ITs Global Information Grids Networking as the VAIOSystem Software Store Source, Providing Novel Innovative Virgin Source Code as Special Lead Content in Website Domains/Freely Accessible CyberSpace Environments …. and ITs HyperRadioProActive Drivers being IT and Media as the HardWired Hardware Deliverers of Future World Views. ….. which is surely a Kin to Panoramas and Vistas and Bigger Picture Shows in the Great Advanced IntelAIgents Game ….. only Better and in Betas, Testing and Tempting Systems to FailSafe in their Configuration and Design.

For Controls in Virtual Machinery which also are able to be enabled to deliver Remote Access Trojan Control of Virtual Machinery too.

Now that is an Interesting Domain for BetaTesting and Pitting Dominion and Ignominy against each Other, for the Straight and Narrow, Right down the Middle of Every Road Approach to Program and Project Control which would Naturally, Virtually deliver QuITe Absolute Power ……. with ITs Ability and Faculty to Absolutely Corrupt should one so choose to Stumble and Fall into ITs Carefully Laid Honey Traps of Zealous Selfish Indulgent Abuse ……. Intelligently Designed to Rob and XXXXtraordinarily Render One with neither Control nor Power …… in a FailSafe Executive Administration System with SCADA Dependencies.

And Hosted in Cloud and Cloud Strata for ITs Global Cover, Reach, Concealment and Rains/Reins/Reigns.

Welcome to CyberIntelAIgent NEUKlearer HyperRadioProActive ProgramMING in Networks InterNetworking JOINT Applications ……… for the SMARTR Enabling of Special IntelAIgents Services and AI Beta Universal Management of Global Perception with IT in Virtually Real Control with AI and Virtualised Realities.

Everything that has a beginning, is reputed and computed and considered to have an end, however ….. in an enigmatic corollary where there is but infinite time with no end, was there ever a beginning? Ergo there only is, is, and the future is now, and created with shared greater thoughts on its constitution, and in that instant of realisation, is the present always really rendered as a past which cannot be changed, and merely a memory to be stored in history?

[StargateSg7]

Re: The Asian Hornet Fly in the Ointment

You could have shortened this to "This has all happened before and will happen again!"

....

V

ONLY SOME of you will get the reference!

V

[Alan Bourke]

Great an even bigger monkeys\typewriters affair

than ChatGPT

[that one in the corner]

do we build this system into the cloud

A system owned by IBM, built by IBM and solely for the use of IBMers[1] - what makes this "the cloud" as compared to any of their Big Iron from 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s etc etc when accessed via a TTY, serial VDU terminal (with or without terminal concentrator), telnet or ssh?

Is the distinguishing difference between the cloud and any other time-share/ time-purchase scheme that the former gives you stats via a web page?

[1] emphasised just to get rid of any arguments that "the cloud is open to anyone" (with the dosh) or that the hardware is being hosted by someone else's data centre.

[andrewj]

By the time the dust settles I suspect the overall contribution will be similar to Watson, namely a rounding error in spacetime.

[Bog witch]

Me too!

I've got an AI too bus she goes to a different school.

[donk1]

" that the virtualization overhead is less than 5%, which is the lowest overhead in the industry that we’re aware of. "

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/hpc/bare-metal-performance-with-the-aws-nitro-system/

" The differential in all of the evaluated cases is within 1% of the performance level. "

So IBM are not aware of AWS Nitro? Lol