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IBM project seeks to emulate the brain
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21/11/2008
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In what it describes as an ‘unprecedented undertaking’, IBM Research is to partner with five leading universities to create computing systems that are expected to simulate and emulate the brain’s abilities for sensation, perception, action, interaction and cognition while rivaling its low power consumption and compact size.
IBM and its collaborators have been awarded $4.9million by DARPA for the first phase of DARPA’s Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) initiative. 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 the project is to demonstrate low power, compact cognitive computers that approach mammalian scale intelligence.
“Exploratory research is in the fabric of IBM’s DNA,” said Josephine Cheng, IBM Fellow and vice president of IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose. “We believe that our cognitive computing initiative will help shape the future of computing in a significant way, bringing to bear new technologies that we haven’t even begun to imagine. The initiative underscores IBM’s capabilities in bold, exploratory research and interest in powerful collaborations to understand the way the world works.”
Working with IBM on the project are Stanford University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cornell University, Columbia University Medical Center and University of California-Merced.
In the past, says IBM, the field of artificial intelligence research has focused on individual aspects of engineering intelligent machines. Cognitive computing seeks to engineer holistic intelligent machines that neatly tie together all of the pieces.
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Author
Graham Pitcher
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