An IBM Research-led cognitive computing team claims advances in large-scale cortical simulation and a new algorithm that synthesizes neurological data, two major milestones that indicate the feasibility of building a cognitive computing chip.
By Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News — Electronic News, 11/18/2009
IBM today at super computing conference SC 09 claimed significant progress toward creating a computer system that simulates and emulates the brain’s abilities for sensation, perception, action, interaction, and cognition in low-power form and compact size.
An IBM Research-led cognitive computing team announced it achieved advances in large-scale cortical simulation and a new algorithm that synthesizes neurological data. According to IBM, these are two major milestones that indicate the feasibility of building a cognitive computing chip.
Scientists at IBM Research – Almaden and in collaboration with colleagues from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab said they performed the first near real-time cortical simulation of the brain that exceeds the scale of a cat cortex and contains 1 billion spiking neurons and 10 trillion individual learning synapses.
To perform the cortical simulation, IBM explained the team built a cortical simulator that incorporates a number of innovations in computation, memory, and communication as well as biological details from neurophysiology and neuroanatomy. The simulation was performed using the cortical simulator on Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s Dawn Blue Gene/P supercomputer with 147,456 CPUs and 144 terabytes of main memory.
In collaboration with researchers from Stanford University IBM further developed an algorithm that exploits the Blue Gene supercomputing architecture in order to noninvasively measure and map the connections between all cortical and sub-cortical locations within the human brain using magnetic resonance diffusion weighted imaging. IBM said that mapping the wiring diagram of the brain is crucial to untangling its vast communication network and understanding how it represents and processes information.
IBM believes the two advancements could move its team closer to its goal of building a compact, low-power synaptronic chip using nanotechnology and advances in phase change memory and magnetic tunnel junctions. The team’s work could break the mold of conventional von Neumann computing, in order to meet the system requirements of the instrumented and interconnected world of tomorrow, Big Blue claimed.
“Learning from the brain is an attractive way to overcome power and density challenges faced in computing today,” said Josephine Cheng, IBM fellow and lab director of IBM Research – Almaden, in a statement. “As the digital and physical worlds continue to merge and computing becomes more embedded in the fabric of our daily lives, it’s imperative that we create a more intelligent computing system that can help us make sense the vast amount of information that’s increasingly available to us, much the way our brains can quickly interpret and act on complex tasks.”
In recognition of their work, IBM and its university partners have been awarded $16.1 million in additional funding from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) for the agency’s Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics initiative.