Name: Watch: IBM using supercomputers to fight COVID-19
Uploaded: 2020-03-27
Duration: 6 min 5 s
Description: They're lending their efforts to the White House Computing Consortium.

[ MUSIC ] Dario thank you so much for joining us as a virtual interview given that we're all working remotely in these very difficult times. What I want to talk with you about is that you are heading up IBM ` s partnership with the White House to use powerful IBM supercomputers in finding a way to find Sight. Corona virus tell us how these computers can help in the fight against this deadly virus. Supercomputers can be understood as a tool to accelerate the process of science and the process of discovery. So the original idea of creating very advanced computers was to be able to do things that experimentally would take us a long time. While we were using normal computers would have also taken a long time and compress it. So let me give you an example using IBM summit which is the largest supercomputer and the fastest supercomputer in the world, which is managed and hosted by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory as part of the Department of Energy researchers. They are working with researchers at the University of Tennessee Took 8000 compounds. Which they simulated to figure out which subset of them in this case they found 77 small molecules were best suited to bind to the protein spike that is present in the virus. That is then used to, to infect the cells in our bodies. And by doing that you could narrow down the scope of possibilities towards experimental efforts of figuring out how do you do new therapies and antivirals. Well, that's very encouraging. That all sounds good, but from all the calculations that IBM has been doing, how much progress Have you made so far. And coming up with a solution. Yeah, well as a scientist, I'm very, hesitant to making promises like that. But in highlighting and seeing that that work was already happening. What we did is in coordination now working collaboratively with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the Department of Energy of the United States. We said, how about we all come together and we bring an unprecedented amount of high performance computing capacity. With a public private partnership. We're going to bring capacity, that sits in the United States not only in the Department of Energy, but in NASA, with the National Science Foundation, with private actors like us and other leading technology companies. As well as MIT, RPI and others, and we all come together. And step two is magic to the best scientists that have an urgent need to this computational capacity, with a purpose of accelerating the rate of discovery. Well let me just bring this back to the average American, who is every day hearing about the increasing number of cases of Coronavirus. More and more adesse, and they're wondering, when are we gonna have a solution. From what you know, are we talking about months that we have to wait or is it years? So as we all work together as a country and globally around this we have to be able to segment different horizons of impact with the technology and resources we have. We are the urgent immediate task of dealing with the consequences of the pandemic. But ultimately we need treatments and we need cures. So that we all understand that takes longer. And we've seen estimates outside that, developing a vaccine is a process that takes a year and a half, or things on that order. So anything that we can do to take that normal process and compress it. Even if it's by nature of months is worth giving it all. So that is the intent of what we've created with the high performance computing consortium. Is to say, can we aggregate enough talent and enough capacity to take a process that we are taking that long and just compress it if we can. Because it's unprecedented, we know know whether that can be done. But we're doing everything in our power to act with that urgency to see what we can do to drive breakthroughs. Well I understand IBM is also partnering with Google, Microsoft and Amazon. What can they do? How crucial are they? Yeah, so we need everybody's capacity and everybody's talent. So so far we have aggregated over 16 supercomputers that on aggregate have over 330 peda flops. We're talking 330, 000 trillion calculations per second on aggregate. These machines have. So that is an effort that takes everybody to come together. Of course, these partners also have fantastic technical and computing capabilities are gonna come on board, but equally as importantly, the expertise. We need to bring everybody's expertise and match the best computer scientist and people who can optimize for these high performance computers Along with the scientists and people working in life sciences and healthcare and so on during need of the computers. So we welcome all the expertise. I really think it's a wonderful testament of all of us coming together. We're competitors but this is a moment to transcend competition. As you know, we are in this race against time. So have has IBM considered collaborating with other innovative companies and here I'm thinking of pharma giants like a Gilead Sciences and regeneron that are working independently on coming up. With their own tour, how might these collaborations accelerate IBM's effort to come up with a solution? Yes, that is exactly the intent. That's where we have the urgency and we thanks so much the opportunity to get the message out of the aggregation of an unprecedented amount of supercomputing capacity like It's never happened before. And that the very intent is to put it in the hands of everybody that can use it for the best outcomes. So we want to collaborate with everybody that has a need and has that capability to be able to contribute. So absolutely that is the precise intent of it all. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

They're lending their efforts to the White House Computing Consortium.

Watch: IBM using supercomputers to fight COVID-19

Leadership

Lending efforts to the White House Computing Consortium.