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This computer chip from IBM is almost like a rodent's brain

By Bryan Chan & Liu Hongzuo - on 19 Aug 2015, 12:05pm

IBM TrueNorth 16-chipboard cluster. Source: Flickr account of IBM Research

IBM’s Dharmendra Modha, Head of Cognitive Computing Group, first started a project for neuromorphic chips back in 2008. In August 2015, the team managed to create a new chip – TrueNorth - and system that has a brain-power that spans 48 million artificial neurons (nerve cell of a brain) – that’s the digital equivalent of a rodent’s brain power.

The IBM TrueNorth board.

These neurosynaptic computer chips are unlike traditional ones. According to IBM, they work like how a neuron (nerve cell of a brain) does, and they run on little electricity by passing information in the form of a “spike” of electrical activity. The TrueNorth chips are designed to work like digital neurons passing information across digital synapses, and are better at identifying patterns information, similar to how our right brains work.

IBM TrueNorth chipboard, with the chip on-board.

With the way how TrueNorth chips function, researchers who have managed to sample the chips are using it to run ‘deep-learning’ algorithms, according to Wired reports. These algorithms are akin to what Facebook does for facial recognition, and Microsoft Skype’s instant language translation. The TrueNorth chips are expected to be more efficient with same processes while using less electrical power.

“Together, this creates this truly path-breaking architecture that can process sensory data in real time while consuming minimal energy in a mobile phone factor,” said Modha, in an interview with Quartz.

Closeup of the TrueNorth chipboard cluster by IBM.

Besides smartphone technology, Modha also expects a future where both traditional, logical computers can work in tandem with these neurosynaptic brain computers – forming a right-brain, left-brain combination that does unprecedented work in information technology.

According to IBM’s research site, TrueNorth has a parallel, distributed, modular, scalable, fault-tolerant, flexible architecture that integrates computation, communication, and memory and has no clock. These chips also use just 0.07 milliwatts of power and can perform 46 billion synaptic operations per second, per watt.

Since the TrueNorth chips do not work like traditional ones, the IBM team also designed a programming language to suit the neurosynaptic nature of the chips. The project is also a collaboration for a program called Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE), backed by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the research arm of the US Department of Defense. It has US$53.5 million in funding from the said agency.

Source: IBM, Wired, Quartz