IBM A.I. Research

Brain Power

 

What is a cognitive chip? The latest SyNAPSE chip, introduced on August 7, 2014, has the potential to transform mobility by spurring innovation around an entirely new class of applications with sensory capabilities at incredibly low power levels. This is enabled by an revolutionary new technology design inspired by the human brain. IBM built a new chip with a brain-inspired computer architecture powered by an unprecedented 1 million neurons and 256 million synapses. It is the largest chip IBM has ever built at 5.4 billion transistors, and has an on-chip network of 4,096 neurosynaptic cores. Yet, it only consumes 70mW during real-time operation — orders of magnitude less energy than traditional chips. As part of a complete cognitive hardware and software ecosystem, this technology opens new computing frontiers for distributed sensor and supercomputing applications.

"The architecture can solve a wide class of problems from vision, audition, and multi-sensory fusion, and has the potential to revolutionize the computer industry by integrating brain-like capability into devices where computation is constrained by power and speed."

— Dharmendra Modha, IBM Fellow

Different from a Standard Chip

Traditional chips run all the time.  This new neurosynaptic chip is event-driven and operates only when it needs to, resulting in a cooler operating environment and lower energy use.

The neurosynaptic chip veers from the traditional von Neumann architecture [the central processing unit or CPU], which inherently creates a bottleneck limiting performance of the system.

Much more at http://www.research.ibm.com/cognitive-computing/neurosynaptic-chips.shtml#fbid=ejd6RgjNwce

Afterword

Very ambitious artificial intelligence research funded by a Microsoft co-founder at:

 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/09/30/brain/