Cognitive Labs

IBM builds cognitive chips that emulate the human brain
August 23, 2011

IBM (NYSE:IBM) researchers have build experimental chips that emulate the perception, action and cognition of brains. The chips aim to drastically lower power consumption and form factors in future "cognitive computers."

The first 2 prototype chips -- which contain no biological elements -- have been fabbed at IBM's Fishkill, NY fab and are undergoing tests at IBM's Yorktown Heights, NY and San Jose, CA research labs. Both prototype cores were fabricated in 45nm silicon on insulator-complementary metal oxide semiconductor (SOI-CMOS) and contain 256 neurons. The digital silicon circuits inspired by neurobiology create a "neurosynaptic core" with integrated memory (replicated synapses), computation (replicated neurons) and communication (replicated axons). One core contains 262,144 programmable synapses; one contains 65,536 learning synapses. They perform simple applications like navigation, machine vision, associative memory, pattern recognition, classification, etc.
IBM's "neurosynaptic computing chips" recreate the phenomena between spiking neurons and synapses in biological systems through advanced algorithms and silicon circuitry. Cognitive computers will be programmed by experiences, finding correlations, creating hypotheses, and remembering the outcomes. The cognitive system will analyze complex information from multiple sensory modalities simultaneously, dynamically rewiring itself as it interacts with its environment. IBM's cognitive computing architecture of on-chip lightweight cores create a single integrated system of hardware and software.

Under the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) multi-year project, IBM combined nanoscience, neuroscience and supercomputing expertise in a cognitive computing initiative with university collaborators. The US Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded the team about $21 million in new funding for Phase 2 of SyNAPSE. The IBM team successfully completed Phases 0 and 1.
These brain-inspired chips move beyond "more than half a century" of von Neumann paradigm computer architectures, said Dharmendra Modha, project leader for IBM Research. The cognitive system has no set programming, integrates memory with processor, and mimics brains' event-driven, distributed and parallel processing.

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As many have heard, Omega-3 fatty acids are highly beneficial to healthy functioning of the Brain. With respect to early man or hominid A this was a highly succulent and sought-after food-source which was not as prevalent in early oceans as today due to the absence and presence of Algal blooms in a complex dichotomy. While significant blooms provide high quality food sources to micro-organisms including krill that are trapped by Baleen and lateen Whales, too Much blooming leads to Anaerobia and a situation analogous to what may have happened on Mars. There, the evidence of perchlorate would dictate either weapons discharges in the past or the latter scenario outlined above, which one would possibly consider more likely from an aqueous perspective as pertains on Earth.

But it is not clear the Mars has operated under this diachronic substrata of sea and sky that we take for granted on Earth. Hence, traveling to Mars should be atop the National agenda, not social networks, necessarily. Since this was first post, a new booster that could go to Mars may be on the drawing board.

Not eating enough fish and you may find yourself scarce when it comes to brainpower. (3) More on this topic later!

Welcome to Cognitive Labs New Readers. We are not going away and plan on expanding our games repertoire significantly and also pursuing a variety of joint ventures.

Dr. Michael L. Addicott

Labels: omega-3