IBM researchers have created prototype computing chips that mirror the human brain, enabling them to not only collect and analyze information, but essentially learn from their mistakes, understand the data they’re seeing and react accordingly.
The "cognitive computing" chips are able to recognize patterns and make predictions based on data, learn through experiences, find correlations among the information and remember outcomes, according to IBM officials.
The chips represent a significant departure from how computers are traditionally programmed and operated, and open opportunities in a wide range of fields, they said.
"Future applications of computing will increasingly demand functionality that is not efficiently delivered by the traditional architecture," Dharmendra Modha, project leader for IBM Research, said in a statement. "These chips are another significant step in the evolution of computers from calculators to learning systems, signaling the beginning of a new generation of computers and their applications in business, science and government."
IBM has been pushing efforts to drive more intelligence into an increasingly wider range of devices, and to create ways to more quickly and intelligently collect, analyze, process and respond to data. Those efforts were on public display in January when IBM’s "Watson" supercomputer beat human contestants on the game show "Jeopardy."
Watson, like many projects at IBM Research Labs, is focused on analytics, or the ability to process and analyze data to arrive at the most optimal decision. Watson was a revelation because of its ability to think in a humanlike fashion and answer questions posed in natural language — with puns, riddles and nuances, etc. by quickly running through its vast database of information, making the necessary connections and returning not with a list of possible correct answers, but the correct answer itself.
The cognitive computing chips echo those efforts. IBM officials are calling the prototypes the company’s first neurosynaptic computing chips, which they said work in a fashion similar to the brain’s neurons and synapses. It’s done through advanced algorithms and silicon circuitry, they said.
It’s through this mimicking of the brain’s functionality that the chips are expected to understand, learn, predict and find correlations, according to IBM. Digital silicon circuits create what IBM is calling the chips’ neurosynaptic cores, which include integrated memory (replicating synapses), computation (replicating neurons) and communication (replicating axons).
To read the original eWeek article, click here: IBM Unveils Chip Prototypes That Mimic Human Brain