Apple is using a revamped, custom Apache Mesos scheduler to power its Siri search queries.
It’s been given the backronym “J.A.R.V.I.S.” — apparently standing for Just A Rather Very Intelligent Scheduler — and Marvel movie fans will likely recognize the name as a geeky nod to Tony Stark’s intelligent computer assistant from the Iron Man movies.
According to slides shown off at a recent Mesos event detailing the change, this marks Apple’s third generation of the virtual assistant, which debuted with the iPhone 4s back in 2011.
The new technology underpinning Siri makes the service more scalable, eases deployment of new features and improves latency. It reportedly uses 100 services on a Mesos cluster, spanning thousands of different nodes.
Facing challenges from established virtual assistants like Google Now as well as upstarts like Microsoft’s Cortana, Apple has seemingly been working overtime to ramp up Siri’s functionality recently. Not only does iOS 8.3 include seven new languages for Siri, but the technology plays a key role in the way we interact with the Apple Watch and, reportedly, the upcoming Apple TV refresh.
Source: Mesosphere
Via: MacStories
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
9 responses to “Siri refresh is known internally by geeky Iron Man reference”
Well ironically there is some Funny iron man humor going on here when bringing up the name
I’m hoping that we’ll see some major major improvements with Siri. I use it all the time and look forward to its continuing evolution. :)
I think we will see something major soon. Apple has been working on a new type of Neural Network for Siri, and the team that they put together is like a who’s who of this type of tech. From the time they started, it was said that it would take them 5 months to create something equivalent to Google Now, and Cortana. And by WWDC 2015 it will have been 13 months. So, maybe by this year, or next year, we should see something cool related to Siri.
instead of working on network latency issues, maybe they should just take the bull by the horns and add a voice recog co-processor to iDevices so siri can handle requests locally without having to use the network….that would speed things up enormously.
Nah, they’ll just make new iPhones even thinner and thinner until they bend when a butterfly lands on them.
Hey is this coming to my iPhone 6? Because outside of “Siri set a timer of x” and “Hey Siri what time is it or temperature?” – Siri fails all the time. Useless for me – Oh yeah I went to the new Apple Siri page and tried verbatim what Siri can do – failed.
Apple has the killer app already – it just doesn’t work most every time.
I only know that the Italian voice is somehow robotic and not natural…I believe was better years ago!
This better help improve Siri by a lot. Hopefully they will have this ready by the time iOS 9 is announced.
Yeah, I think we will see something major soon. Apple has been working on a new type of Neural Network for Siri, and the team that they put together is like a who’s who of this type of tech. From the time they started, it was said that it would take them 5 months to create something equivalent to Google Now, and Cortana. And by WWDC 2015 it will have been 13 months. So, maybe by this year, or next year, we should see something cool related to Siri.