IBM Building Cognitive Microchips Capable of Super Human Computing

""A microchip with about as much brain power as a garden worm might not seem very impressive, compared with the blindingly fast chips in modern personal computers. But a new microchip made by researchers at IBM represents a landmark. Unlike an ordinary chip, it mimics the functioning of a biological brain—a feat that could open new possibilities in computation.

Inside the brain, information is processed in parallel, and computation and memory are entwined. Each neuron is connected to many others, and the strength of these connections changes constantly as the brain learns. These dynamics are thought to be crucial to learning and memory, and they are what the researchers sought to mimic in silicon. Conventional chips, by contrast, process one bit after another and shunt information between a discrete processor and memory components. The bigger a problem is, the larger the number of bits that must be shuffled around.

The IBM researchers have built and tested two demonstration chips that store and process information in a way that mimics a natural nervous system. The company says these early chips could be the building blocks for something much more ambitious: a computer the size of a shoebox that has about half the complexity of a human brain and consumes just one kilowatt of power. This is being developed with $21 million in funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, in collaboration with several universities.""

"The new chips contain 45-nanometer digital transistors built directly on top of a memory array. "It's like having data storage next to each logic gate within the processor," says Cornell University computer scientist Rajit Manohar, who's collaborating with IBM on hardware designs. Critically, this means the chips consume 45 picojoules per "event," mimicking the transmission of a pulse in a neural network. That's about 1,000 times less power than a conventional computer consumes, says Gert Cauwenberghs, director of the Institute for Neural Computation at the University of California, San Diego."

Read On to Explore the 'neural core' Revolution...

[PAGE 1]
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/38367/

[PAGE 2]
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/38367/page2/

IBM produces first 'brain chips'

""The SyNAPSE system uses two prototype "neurosynaptic computing chips". Both have 256 computational cores, which the scientists described as the electronic equivalent of neurons.

One chip has 262,144 programmable synapses, while the other contains 65,636 learning synapses.""

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14574747

IBM Brings Brain Power to Experimental Chips

""The chips could help manage water supplies through real-time data analysis and pattern recognition, Modha said. Computers could generate tsunami warnings through a network of sensors monitoring temperature, pressure, wave height and ocean tide. The chips' cognitive features could help grocers identify bad produce and give smartphones features to better interact with the environment.

IBM and its research partners have already generated some results from the project, such as walking through a maze, playing a game of Pong, or recognizing patterns in data. The researchers are gunning for better results that include image recognition in videos. ""

http://www.pcworld.com/article/238365/ibm_brings_brain_power_to_experimental_chips.html

Oh yes Terminator / Skynet Fans... We're right on schedule.