IBM-Powered Supercomputers Lead Semi-Annual Rankings

Only Manufacturer with Multiple Systems in Top Ten of Top500 and Green500, Debuts World’s Most Powerful Commercial Supercomputer

ARMONK, N.Y., — IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that it is the only vendor to have multiple systems in the Top 10 of the semi-annual Top500 and Green500 supercomputer lists. This includes the US Dept of Energy’s Summit and Sierra supercomputers, the overall number one and number two most powerful supercomputers in the world, along with the Lassen Supercomputer built for Lawrence Livermore National Labs. IBM also teamed with Total, a global oil producer, for the world’s most powerful commercial supercomputer that debuted on the Top500 list at #11.

IBM Highlights from this iteration of the Top500 list and Green500 list, rank systems by performance and energy efficiency, respectfully include:

  • The number one overall aggregate performance score using 14x fewer systems than the number two overall
  • Three Systems in the Top 10 of the Top 500, the most of any vendor
  • Four Systems in the Top 10 of the Green500, the most of any vendor
  • The only vendor to have multiple systems in the Top 10 of the both the Top500 and the Green500

“IBM was an early-adopter of data-centric design principles, and when we began developing POWER9 for the HPC industry we maintained that we wanted it to be measured by application performance,” said IBM Vice President of Exascale Systems David Turek. “Our systems appearing in the top ranks for both performance and energy efficiency is a testament to our efforts. Also, seeing this technology now permeate into commercial systems is an important development for the industry as we evolve these workloads for both traditional and deep learning applications.”

IBM POWER9’s industry leading approach to memory bandwidth allows for 9.5x faster data transfer between the POWER9 processor and its attached accelerators vs compared x86i. IBM POWER9 systems are designed to move data throughout the system with fewer bottlenecks and improve energy efficiency.

As part of the OpenPOWER Foundation, IBM worked with NVIDIA to jointly develop the industry’s only CPU-to-GPU NVIDIA NVLink connection, which allows for 5.6x faster memory bandwidth between the IBM POWER9 CPU and NVIDIA Tesla V100 Tensorcore GPUs than compared x86-based systemsii. This allows for nearly a 4x reduction in AI model trainingiii versus the compared x86 based systems.

New on the Top500 list is Pangea III, a new supercomputer built by IBM for Total. Pangea III is being built using the same IBM POWER9, high-performance architecture as used in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Summit and Sierra supercomputers, the world’s smartest supercomputers. IBM POWER9 is designed to take advantage of attached accelerators, which can help clients not only improve performance but also improve energy efficiency in their HPC workloads.

IBM, KPMG, Merck and Walmart to collaborate as part of FDA’s program to evaluate the use of blockchain to protect pharmaceutical product integrity

The FDA pilot program explores innovative and emerging approaches for the tracing and verification of prescription products

ARMONK, N.Y., NEW YORK, KENILWORTH, N.J., and BENTONVILLE, Ark., — IBM (NYSE: IBM), KPMG, Merck (NYSE: MRK), and Walmart (NYSE: WMT) today announced that the companies have been selected by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be included in a program in support of the U.S. Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) that addresses requirements to identify, track and trace prescription medicines and vaccines distributed within the United States.

The program is intended to assist drug supply chain stakeholders, including FDA, in developing the electronic, interoperable system that will identify and trace certain prescription drugs as they are distributed within the United States.

“Our supply chain strategy, planning and logistics are built around the customers and patients we serve,” said Craig Kennedy, Senior Vice President, Supply Chain, at Merck, which is known as MSD outside the U.S. and Canada. “Reliable and verifiable supply helps improve confidence among all the stakeholders—especially patients—while also strengthening the foundation of our business.”

Each company brings unique expertise to the project, which will create a shared permissioned blockchain network that allows real-time monitoring of products. The proposed network is intended to help reduce the time needed to track and trace inventory; allow timely retrieval of reliable distribution information; increase accuracy of data shared among network members; and help determine the integrity of products in the distribution chain, including whether products are kept at the correct temperature.

“With successful Blockchain pilots in pork, mangoes and leafy greens that provide enhanced traceability, we are looking forward to the same success and transparency in the biopharmaceutical supply chain,” said Karim Bennis, Walmart’s Vice President of Strategic Planning and Implementation, Health and Wellness. “We believe we have to go further than offering great products that help our customers live better at everyday low prices. Our customers also need to know they can trust us to help ensure products are safe. This pilot and U.S. Drug Supply Chain Security Act requirements will help us do just that.”

Blockchain is designed to establish a permanent record and may be integrated with existing supply chain and traceability systems.

“Blockchain could provide an important new approach to further improving trust in the biopharmaceutical supply chain,” said Mark Treshock, IBM Global Solutions Leader for Blockchain in Healthcare & Life Sciences. “We believe this is an ideal use for the technology because it can not only provide an audit trail that tracks drugs within the supply chain; it can track who has shared data and with whom, without revealing the data itself. Blockchain has the potential to transform how pharmaceutical data is controlled, managed, shared and acted upon throughout the lifetime history of a drug.”

IBM, KPMG, and Walmart, the largest retailer in the U.S., have extensive experience in implementing blockchain solutions to help enhance the safety and traceability of products. Increasingly, customers are requesting more detailed information about products.

“Blockchain’s innate ability within a private, permissioned network to provide an ‘immutable record’ makes it a logical tool to deploy to help address DSCSA compliance requirements,” said Arun Ghosh, KPMG Blockchain Leader. “The ability to leverage existing cloud infrastructure is making enterprise blockchain increasingly affordable and adaptable, helping drug manufacturers, distributors and dispensers meet their patient safety and supply chain integrity goals.”

The pilot project is scheduled to be completed in fourth quarter of 2019, and results are expected to be published in an FDA DSCSA program report. At that time, the project’s participants will evaluate next steps.

Wimbledon & IBM Herald The Role Of AI To Maintain A Competitive Advantage In Sports Landscape

LONDON,  — The All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today continued the pledge of their partnership to leverage disruptive innovation to elevate and differentiate the iconic traditional tennis tournament.

Announcing a series of innovations for The Championships 2019 across AI and Cloud, maximising the opportunities presented by IBM’s core strategic capabilities, the 30-year-old partners maintained the importance of challenging the status quo through technology.

For 30 years, IBM has worked in partnership with the AELTC year-round and during The Championships to deliver everything from IT operations to fan facing digital properties, including the latest apps and the award-winning Wimbledon website. IBM helps Wimbledon use AI to make processes more efficient, to make experiences more insightful, and ensure The Championships runs safely and securely for its critical three-week period.

New for 2019: Enhanced AI-powered automated video highlights for Wimbledon fans. Not all highlights during a tennis match are equal for example, a highly passionate crowd favourite could generate more excitement than a more reserved yet equally skilled opponent. As a learning system, Watson has been taught to better recognise acoustics and understand inadvertent bias increasing the quality of the output. With sound analysis from Watson Acoustics, the system can now recognise when the ball has been struck, allowing a tighter cropping of highlight clips saving vital time and maximising every second of rights footage. Using Watson Open Scale, the system can now recognise levels of noise and excitement levels of players, allowing it to remove bias when searching for highlights from players with a particularly vocal following or those who are particularly animated on court.

New for 2019, IBM and Wimbledon have developed a progressive web app to provide a service for Wimbledon audiences in territories with lower bandwidth and less developed mobile hardware. Acknowledging that over 900 million fans in India for example, express an interest in Wimbledon, the new progressive web app is designed to provide a lightweight experience to ensure that fans in those territories can make sure they don’t miss out on the latest scores and results.

IBM works with the AELTC to deliver everything from design capability (via IBM iX), to building and integrating the latest systems and applications. IBM ensures the continuous availability and scalability of Wimbledon’s digital properties by securing Wimbledon to the core. For example, during the 2018 Championships IBM detected and blocked over 200 million suspicious security events. IBM has over 200 of its people dedicating their skills and expertise to helping Wimbledon in its pursuit of greatness; delivering award-winning solutions built on years of global sports, media and industry expertise.

“For 30 years we have been working with Wimbledon to introduce new technologies that enhance fan experience. For more than a century, IBM has responsibly ushered into the world revolutionary technologies, building enterprise solutions that are trusted as part of our DNA, and we are dedicated to delivering AI systems that are built responsibly. It seems fitting that to mark the 30th year of our partnership, one of the new innovations for The Championships, Wimbledon 2019 will be eliminating bias in creation of the video highlights package.” Sam Seddon IBM Wimbledon Client Executive.

“For 30 years, IBM’s technology innovations have been at the heart of our efforts to continuing our journey towards a great digital experience that ensures we connect with our fans globally wherever they may be watching and from whatever device that may be. Our partnership with IBM is critical to us in helping us to disrupt the traditional perceptions of Wimbledon through innovative, worldclass uses of technology, in particular, enabling us to place content with fans where they want to consume it and acknowledge the ever-increasing focus on video and new content formats.” Alexandra Willis, Head of Communications, Content and Digital, AELTC.

IBM and The Weather Channel Launch Forecast: Change Initiative to Help Combat Freshwater Scarcity

IBM Invests to Put Clean Water Access Front and Center on World Environment Day; The Weather Channel Becomes The Water Channel

ATLANTA/ARMONK, NY, – This week for World Environment Day, IBM (NYSE: IBM) and The Weather Company, an IBM Business, launched Forecast: Change, a new initiative to help combat freshwater scarcity in communities around the world. Forecast: Change provides resources in support of actions that are designed to help address the lack of freshwater access around the world.

By 2025 two thirds of the world’s population could be living in water stressed areas. More than 2 billion people around the world lack access to safe water. Freshwater scarcity is a global issue that impacts human food security, the health of the environment, and our global economy. As the planet warms, the world has seen an increase in extreme severe storms and conditions such as flood and drought, leading to more natural disasters that can require massive relief efforts in affected areas. These changes in weather patterns can not only spell disaster for local communities, but also reduce our planet’s capacity to sustainably provide clean water.

Starting June 5, Forecast: Change will include:

  • An IBM contribution of $1 million in total market value to The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and charity: water to help provide and protect clean water. This includes cash, expert services and technology to help expand efforts of these organizations that help provide access to clean drinking water for people in climate-distressed areas.
  • The Weather Channel brand, part of IBM, will raise awareness of freshwater scarcity by temporarily changing its name to “The Water Channel” from June 5-9 on web and the app, as well as on the separately-owned television network, part of Entertainment Studios.
  • A dedicated IBM Code and Response hackathon in Cairo, Egypt, focused on building and deploying technologies for relief efforts around natural disasters such as flooding and drought, which can help protect accessibility to clean water.

“We’re thrilled to collaborate with IBM on their Forecast: Change initiative and look forward to bringing clean water to thousands of people in need,” said Scott Harrison, founder and CEO of charity: water.

“Many cities around the world are facing severe water supply constraints due to climate change, population growth, watershed degradation and invasive plant species.” said Andrea Erickson, TNC’s global managing director for water security. “By employing technology, science, and innovative financial investments, The Nature Conservancy is showing how nature-based solutions can improve water security and offer positive benefits – like greater resilience to climate change – to impacted communities.”

Visitors to The Weather Channel app and weather.com can take action to help support clean water for all by:

  • Learning about access to clean water — Check your forecast on The Weather Channel app or weather.com to learn more about water scarcity and help support clean water access.
  • Understanding your personal water footprint — Everything you use, wear, buy, sell and eat takes water to produce. For instance, a new pair of jeans can take 1,800 gallons or more of fresh water to make. That’s enough to provide a family of four with clean water for months. Get more details at TheWaterChannel.org.
  • Practicing conservation — Go to TheWaterChannel.org to learn more, participate in monthly conservation challenges, and find out how you can help make an impact on world water health.

Tech for Good

Additionally, the IBM Code and Response initiative, which seeks technology solutions for natural disaster preparedness, response and recovery – and works to implement them – will hold the Code for Cairo hackathon for developers June 22-24. Developers will focus on solutions for natural disasters related to flooding and drought, which can help protect accessibility to clean water.

As part of its initiative focusing on the availability of fresh water, IBM also is working with the Jefferson Project, led by IBM Research, which aims to create a blueprint for the future protection and preservation of fresh water around the world. The Jefferson Project captures and analyzes IoT data to track water quality of Lake George in the northeastern area of New York State. IBM Research is also working to find safe water for remote parts of Kenya. Recently announced, The Freshwater Trust and SweetSense Inc. are collaborating with IBM to use IoT and blockchain technology to make groundwater usage sustainable, in an effort to tackle water shortages relating to drought.

IBM combines leading AI and cloud technology to predict extreme weather and help people and businesses prepare and respond. For example, IBM’s global network of Resiliency Services Centers support hybrid cloud and AI to help clients combat disruptions resulting from extreme weather, as well as from cyber threats and other crises. The company provides technology to help solve global efforts like natural disaster relief, access to clean water, and climate change.