For those that have not heard the news, a computer developed by IBM, with advanced artificial intelligence, has won a special three day round of the TV popular trivia show Jeopardy. Below is a in depth introduction to Watson, the IBM super computer and a few minutes of the game play. Note that the computer was not “plugged in” to the internet during this contest, although I doubt the internet would have been fast enough for his data retrieval.

Watson did not face your run of the mill contestant, but rather two of Jeopardy’s most successful and longest running contestants ever, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. These contestants are the champions of champions. It is not surprising IBM did this project, after all, in 1998, IBM’s “Deep Blue” beat Garry Kasparov at a six game match of chess at two wins and three draws, leading Kasparov, the current world champion, to complain IBM had cheated.

Ever since the invention of the integrated circuit, technology has moved forward to make processors that can do more calculations in ever less time. Which leads us to the “regular” computer of today. Dual core processors are pretty much standard on computers with Quad Core or more becoming more and more popular. Multi-core technology has definitely advanced and is becoming commonplace. Smart phones have just been introduced with dual core processors, and next year, we will see tablets running quad-core architecture.

The big advantage of multi-core processors is the ability to run multiple calculations at the same time. What this means for developers, is creating a way to split your computing algorithm into multiple threads so that they can be run concurrently. Without giving away any secrets, this is exactly what our developers have been working on for Version 21 of WorkNC, the ability to calculate a cutterpath across multiple cores. Additionally, with multi-core computers, it is possible to run multiple cutterpaths at the same time, in parallel, as long as one is not dependent on the other.

What this means to you as a CNC programmer is you have to program a little smarter. Utilize sequences and templates to have multiple cutterpaths ready to calculate, to take advantage of those computing cores. Include advanced options such as Holder Collision checking, Dynamic Stock Model Management or even Automatic 5-Axis. Use smart selecting and boundaries so you can batch more work, and perform less manual editing later.

We believe this will dramatically change how productive you can be, and once again show why WorkNC is industry leading software and development.

Now if only IBM can shrink Watson’s computer to fit into Asimo below, then maybe the robot could do my programming for me…