IBM is seeking to build the computer of the future based on the
efficient way the brain works.
IBM Research and five leading universities are partnering in a
£3.3m project to create computing systems that are expected to
simulate and emulate the brain's abilities for sensation,
perception, action, interaction and cognition, whilst rivalling its
low power consumption and compact size.
Cognitive computing offers the promise of systems that can
integrate and analyse vast amounts of data from many sources in the
blink of an eye, says IBM, allowing businesses or individuals to
make rapid informed decisions.
IBM said, "Bankers must make split-second decisions based on
constantly changing data that flows at an ever-dizzying rate. And
in the business of monitoring the world's water supply, a network
of sensors and actuators constantly records and reports metrics
such as temperature, pressure, wave height, acoustics and ocean
tide. In either case, making sense of all that input is a massive
task for one person, or even 100 people."
It says a cognitive computer, acting as a "global brain," could
quickly and accurately put together the disparate pieces and help
people make good decisions rapidly.
By learning from the structure, dynamics, function and behaviour
of the brain, the IBM-led cognitive computing research team aims to
break the conventional "programmable machine paradigm".
Ultimately, the team hopes to rival the brain's low power
consumption and small size by using nanoscale devices for synapses
and neurons. "This technology stands to bring about entirely new
computing architectures and programming paradigms", said IBM.
The end goal, said Big Blue, is ubiquitously deployed computers
imbued with a new intelligence that can integrate information from
a variety of sensors and sources that deal with ambiguity respond
in a context-dependent way and learn over time and carry out
pattern recognition to solve difficult problems based on
perception, action and cognition in complex, real-world
environments.
IBM and its university partners have been awarded £3.3m in
funding from the
Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the first
phase of DARPA's Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable
Electronics (SyNAPSE) initiative.
IBM's proposal, "Cognitive Computing via Synaptronics and
Supercomputing (C2S2)", outlines research over the next nine months
in areas including synaptronics, material science, neuromorphic
circuitry, supercomputing simulations and virtual environments.
Initial research will focus on demonstrating nanoscale, low
power synapse-like devices and on uncovering the functional
microcircuits of the brain.
The long-term mission of C2S2 is to demonstrate low-power,
compact cognitive computers that approach mammalian-scale
intelligence.