Were you into frogs? - News - IBM's development of autonomic computing

Electronic News, July 1, 2002 by Bernard Levine

Did you ace biology in high school? If you were into dissecting frogs, you may be ready for the next great leaps in electronics -- information technology and biology are coming together.

Researchers are already combining electronic and biological pursuits to push advances in medicine, genetics, biometric recognition systems and many other areas.

Watch for a lot more, according to Nicholas Donofrio, IBM senior VP of technology and manufacturing, who gave a keynote address at last week's PC Expo/TechXNY trade show in New York.

"Throughout industry, the next big thing comes and goes, but one theme is amazingly consistent, and that's been convergence," Donofrio said. Pointing to such examples as the convergence of communications and computers, he told the IT trade show audience it should now look for "the confluence of information technology and biology. Computer scientists and technologists have long recognized that we learn a lot from the biological worlds, studying complexity in a system."

Donofrio said his big regret is not studying more biology in his younger days.

"More and more of our examinations at IBM are inspired by the natural world," he said. "Computing systems are being built today with so much complexity, only a few can understand them. We need to learn how to manage complexity."

IBM is trying to develop autonomic computing, he added, an approach to building computers that draws on examples of automation in nature. The autonomic nervous system seamlessly controls functions in the human body, such as respiration and heart rate, without conscious effort or recognition by the individual.

IBM calls the next generation of computing autonomic "because it must act like our autonomic nervous systems," according to material on the company's Web site.

"It must provide an unprecedented level of self-regulation while hiding complexity from the user. And it will be a radical shift in the way we conceive and develop computing systems today. This will call for more than retooling old systems -- autonomic computing calls for a whole new area of study."

Donofrio told his audience that "the boundary between the person and the computer and the network is dissolving. Loosening the boundaries of the natural and computing worlds may be frightening to some. I think it's exciting."

Now, if you had just paid more attention in biology.