Super computer to mimic your brain

 

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Posted on 24 Nov 2008 at 15:06

Computer giant IBM has joined forces with an international team of scientists to create a next-generation supercomputer that mimics the human brain.

The engineers said the aim of the partnership was to create computing systems that can simulate and emulate the brain's abilities for sensation, perception, action, interaction and cognition. Ultimately, the team hopes to rival the brain's low power consumption and small size by using nanoscale devices for synapses and neurons

According to the team, this cognitive computing approach offers the promise of systems that can integrate and analyse vast amounts of data from many sources in the "blink of an eye".

A cognitive computer would be able to quickly put together disparate pieces of complex puzzles and help people make good decisions rapidly, IBM said.

"The end goal: ubiquitously deployed computers imbued with a new intelligence that can integrate information from a variety of sensors and sources, deal with ambiguity, respond in a context-dependent way, learn over time and carry out pattern recognition to solve difficult problems based on perception, action and cognition in complex, real-world environments," said the company in a statement.

Recently, the IBM cognitive computing team demonstrated the near-real-time simulation at a scale of a small mammal brain using cognitive computing algorithms with the power of IBM's BlueGene supercomputer. With this simulation capability, the researchers said they are experimenting with various mathematical hypotheses of brain function and structure as they work toward discovering the brain's core computational micro and macro circuits.

Josephine Cheng, IBM fellow and vice president of IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, said: "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."

Author: Robert Jaques