Boston Globe: MITRE names $20 million supercomputer after Mass. software pioneer Judy Clapp

Every supercomputer needs a name. Bedford-based government contractor MITRE picked a familiar one, writes the Boston Globe.

No, not Watson — and definitely not HAL 9000. Meet Judy. Unveiled earlier this month, MITRE said its $20 million supercomputer powered by Nvidia chips would be named after Judy Clapp, the longtime software engineer at MITRE who was among its first employees in the 1950s, when it spun off from MIT. Clapp, in her 90s today, still lives in Massachusetts and welcomed the honor. (She retired from MITRE in 2005 after 46 years there.)

MITRE funded the artificial intelligence-powered computer from its own R&D budget. It’s housed in Virginia: MITRE chief technology officer Charles Clancy said his team tried to install it in Bedford but couldn’t pull it off because of the high demands for electricity. MITRE plans to use Judy for a variety of functions: analyzing weather data, cutting through government bureaucracy, helping cyber experts fight hackers.

"Hopefully, if it works, there would be lots of different agencies applying it to their missions," Clancy said.

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