IBM has created a very powerful neurosynthetic computer chip

Cognitive calculations are one of the most interesting scientific and technical trends in recent years. The idea that one day someone will be able to build a computer that will be as powerful and effective as the human brain can really impress. And the newest developed chip from IBM puts us closer to this goal.

Big Blue (so often called IBM) "married" neurobiology with the production of supercomputers and created a new computer chip the size of a postage stamp. The chip copies the work of one million brain neurons and consumes very little electricity (about 70 milliwatts). The chip, called TrueNorth, belongs to the second generation of chips for cognitive computing, developed over the last decade by IBM, not without financial support for the "ubiquitous" DARPA and its SyNAPSE program. In order to understand how far the scientists have advanced in the development of the direction of cognitive computing, you should know that the first generation of IBM chips simulated the work of only 256 neurons. And for those times when this chip was created, it was an incredible breakthrough.

While the first generation of the chip had 262,144 programmable synapses, the new chip will cover 256 million. The first generation of the chip had only one neurosynaptic core. The new chip has 4,096 such cores. Such an incredible progress in the development of this direction promises incredible opportunities in the future: the technology will be equally useful, for example, in the manufacture of devices that can restore sight to people and in the production of robots that will be used in search and rescue operations during emergencies.

A qualitative leap in the development of this chip is not just a sign of how much more powerful the new architecture of the TrueNorth chip has become. This event is also a solid proof of the enormous potential for further development of this direction. You probably know the fact that the human brain is an incredibly complex computer system. And although we have already seen and heard about many systems that have tried to copy or simulate the processes taking place in the brain, the main difficulty and problem of such systems has always been that the development of a computer that matches the computing power of the brain is an insanely difficult task. Only last year, scientists announced the success in creating one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, whose power (and this is taking into account the work of a supercomputer based on 83,000 processors) can be compared only with one percent of the power that the brain spends in just one second of its calculations .

According to Murphy's law, humanity will theoretically be able to solve at first sight an impossible task in building computers as powerful as the human brain, by 2020. But even despite the tremendous work done by IBM, which created a new architecture that combines memory, computing processes and communication capabilities to optimize the speed of work, the likelihood of achieving the above goal in the time frames seems unlikely. The long plans of the company include the development of a neurosynaptic system of chips with ten billion neurons and a size of no more than a two-liter bottle of soda. And if it seems to you that the transition from manufacturing 256-neuron chips to developing chips with 1 million neurons is a huge leap in development, IBM will need to take several more steps forward to reach its ultimate goal.

However, the scientists involved in the development of this project, as well as many among those who see this potential in everything, are incredibly happy even for this breakthrough:

"This is a huge breakthrough in the development of computer architecture, which is very important, especially if we consider that the industry is moving towards a new generation of cloud computing that will require working with huge data sets," says Sean Khan of Samsung.

Dr. Dharmendra S. Modha, head of the project to develop computer systems that mimic the work of the human brain at IBM, sees in the development of this direction more concrete benefits that will open up to us in the future:

"Chips created on the basis of the human brain model can transform the world of mobile electronics in such a way that you will have devices on your hands that will allow you to go online even without having Wi-Fi. To do this, special sensory and intelligent applications will be used. "

Does this mean that our smartphones in just a few years will become much "smarter"? Probably not. However, this is definitely a sign that we are already moving in this direction.

The article is based on materials https://hi-news.ru/technology/ibm-sozdala-ochen-moshhnyj-nejrosinapticheskij-kompyuternyj-chip.html.