IBM and the reverse-question quiz show Jeopardy! have cooked up an interesting new face-off: An IBM computing system named “Watson” will compete on Jeopardy! against the show’s two most successful and celebrated contestants -- Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Best yet, the multi-server Watson was built using IBM Power Systems.

The first-ever man vs. machine Jeopardy! competition will air on February 14, 15, and 16, with two matches being played over three consecutive days.

The Backstory

Watson, named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, was built by a team of IBM scientists who set out to accomplish a grand challenge: Build a computing system that rivals a human’s ability to answer questions posed in natural language with speed, accuracy, and confidence. The Jeopardy! format provides the ultimate challenge because the game’s clues involve analyzing subtle meaning, irony, riddles, and other complexities in which humans excel and computers traditionally do not. 

As for Watson's competition, it's pretty steep: Jennings broke the Jeopardy! record for the most consecutive games played by winning 74 games in a row during the 2004-2005 season, resulting in winnings of more than $2.5 million. Rutter won the highest cumulative amount ever by a single Jeopardy! player, earning $3,255,102. The total amount is a combination of Rutter’s original appearance in 2002, plus three Tournament wins: The “Tournament of Champions” and the "Million Dollar Masters Tournament" in 2002 and the "Ultimate Tournament of Champions" in 2005.

The grand prize for this competition will be $1 million with second place earning $300,000 and third place $200,000. Rutter and Jennings will donate 50 percent of their winnings to charity and IBM will donate 100 percent of its winnings to charity.

"After four years, our scientific team believes that Watson is ready for this challenge based on its ability to rapidly comprehend what the Jeopardy! clue is asking, analyze the information it has access to, come up with precise answers, and develop an accurate confidence in its response,” notes Dr. David Ferrucci, the scientist leading the IBM Research team that has created Watson. “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." 

There's a Lot More to This Story

Watson runs proprietary IBM software on SUSE Linux on Power. IBM hasn't said how many POWER7-based servers it's using, nor the number of cores or total memory at work, but the videos that hype Watson the development story show IBM guys putting together pretty large rack system.

To learn more, head over to IBM's dedicated Watson site at www.ibmwatson.com. There's lots of great stuff for both Jeopardy! and Power Systems fans.