IBM gets $16 million to bolster its brain-on-a-chip technology

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IBM gets $16 million to bolster its brain-on-a-chip technology
The DARPA SyNAPSE project seeks to build systems that rapidly understand tons of data.
By Michael Cooney , Network World , 08/05/2009

The quest to mimic the best parts of human brain function on a highly intelligent computer to decypher tons of data quickly is heating up.

IBM this week got $16.1 million to kick up its part of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency research program aimed at rapidly and efficiently put brain-like senses into actual hardware and software so that computers can process and understand data more rapidly.
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IBM has now gotten $21 million to work on the program known as Systems of neuromorphic adaptive plastic scalable electronics (SyNAPSE) which includes researchers from HRL Laboratories, which got $16.2 million in Oct. 2008, and others such as HP.

According to DARPA, the SyNAPSE program will create useful, intelligent machines. In DARPA language: the agency is looking to develop electronic neuromorphic machine technology that is scalable to biological levels. The goal is to develop systems capable of analyzing vast amounts of data from many sources in the blink of an eye, letting the military or civilian businesses make rapid decisions in time to have a significant impact on a given problem or situation.

According to DARPA, programmable machines are limited not only by their computational capacity, but also by an architecture requiring (human-derived) algorithms to both describe and process information from their environment. In contrast, biological neural systems such as human brains, autonomously process information in complex environments by automatically learning relevant and probabilistically stable features and associations, DARPA stated.

As compared to biological systems for example, today’s programmable machines are less efficient by a factor of one million to one billion in complex, real-world environments. The SyNAPSE program seeks to break the programmable machine archetype and define a new path forward, DARPA stated.

DARPA goes on to state that realizing this ambitious goal will require the collaboration of numerous technical disciplines such as computational neuroscience, artificial neural networks, large-scale computation, neuromorphic VLSI, information science, cognitive science, materials science, unconventional nanometer-scale electronics, and CMOS design and fabrication.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/08...brain.html

[nowwicked]

This type of research has been going on in IBM for a long time. Any way to make faster more efficient processors or "calculating/thinking" machines. Back in the 80's we had a big dream of "Knowledge Machines", machines that could actually glean knowledge from vast amounts of data. This is a long long term project and because IBM does have some of the most advanced labs and fabrication facilities on the planet they always get a chunk of the pie. IBM's interest however would be from the view of "how do I apply this to a business machine". That is what IBM does, is build hardware, software and services for business machines to make a profit by selling them.

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thanks for the info. International Business Machines. I guess they are kinda cool, maybe they'll start offering their natty tattoos again if popularity increases.