And it seems likely that the blockchain, and Raft, and Spanner, and that great granddaddy of distributed peer-to-peer data called BitTorrent, are only the beginning; I expect more and more distributed-computing breakthroughs of comparable magnitude over the next decade, as the world's searchlight minds turn to the forthcoming Internet Of Things.
The use of graphics processors, said Ed Lazowska, a computer scientist at the University of Washington, is "revolutionizing high-performance computing, yielding breakthroughs in performance and in energy efficiency".
In the era of decentralized computing, a breakthrough in blockchain technology, which underlines Bitcoin (Nakamoto 2008), can be used to preserve users' privacy and prevent information fraud.
There have been dizzying advances in computing power and breakthroughs in new technologies.
Davison developed a breakthrough computing method which can carry out "simultaneous localisation and mapping" – known in the robotics world as Slam – to create a 3D map of a space with a single camera.
"Beyond our excitement for the match itself, our team is very motivated by the possibilities that Watson's breakthrough computing capabilities hold for building a smarter planet and helping people in their business tasks and personal lives".
In recent years, research in ANNs has resurged, now under the deep-learning umbrella, and grown extremely popular due to major breakthroughs in computing capabilities, attracting considerable attention from both academia and industry.
In any case, says Pfeifer, building an intelligent humanoid robot – one that "can smoothly interact with humans and human environments in a natural way" – will require breakthroughs in computing and battery efficiency, not to mention a quantum leap in sensory equipment.
Virtualization is to significantly benefit from expanding computational power, dedicated software, cloud computing, big data, and other breakthroughs.
