IBM has unveiled the first generation of a computer processor that works like a brain. Currently, the chip has the capabilities for pattern recognition, image processing, classification and associative storage. In the future, it will be equipped with sense capture and can be used in various areas – from financial market analysis to freshness control in the supermarket. The new architecture also eliminates problems of the classic von Neumann construction method. which increasingly affect the processors developers.
It is the first cognitive processor core that combines computing via neurons, memory in the form of synapses and communication via axomes,‘ head of development Dharmendra Modha told CNET. Research is conducted within the framework of the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (Synapse) of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency DARPA.
The aim is to create a system that can not only capture and analyze complex information via different sensors, but also reprograms itself via interaction with the environment. The aim is to make the system – comparable to an organic brain – as compact and energy-efficient as possible. It is equipped with 256 neurons, 262 144 programmable synapses and 65 536 switching points for learning processes. All components are non-organic, but in their construction they are strongly inspired by the example of nature.
The aim is to develop a processor with the capacity of a mammalian brain, but its structure is more than a million times more complex. In addition to six laboratories from IBM, five universities are participating in the research. Modha can imagine a wide range of applications for smart chips in the future. This would theoretically enable extremely precise financial market analyses as well as the monitoring of global water movements, including timely warnings of tsunamis. In everyday life, the chips could help supermarket employees sort out goods that have become bad. This is possible because it can be equipped with the ability to sense sensations, according to science. While they process visual, odor and haptic inputs, they are able to work in different modes of operation at once and at a small size with less than 20 watts of energy input. When the first commercial applications for the new chips are available, is still in the stars.
Modha hopes to introduce a new paradigm in the field of computing. Although IBM sees the new design as a supplement to conventional computer technology, the processor system avoids problems of the computer design that has been common for decades – also known as von Neumann or Princeton architecture. Due to its strictly sequential method, this is hardly susceptible to errors and is advantageous from a programming point of view, but only permits individual, successive instruction processing.
In addition, the bus connection between the CPU and memory has to handle both the data and the command flow, becoming more and more of a bottleneck. Among other things, this has a negative impact on the development of faster memory modules, whose latency times cannot keep up with the progress of the processor clock frequencies, writes the chip manufacturer Intel in a whitepaper from 2005. This should not affect the new technology as it integrates memory into the processor and masters event-based decentralized and parallel processing of inputs.