IBM creates first ever brain chips
IBM has developed a new microprocessor it claims has come even closer than ever before to replicating a human brain.
Its new system is capable of fully “rewiring” its connections while it encounters new information, in a similar fashion to the way all biological synapses work.
Scientific researchers believe that through replicating that feature, technology might be able to start learning. Cognitive computers could eventually be used for monitoring the environment and understanding more about human behaviour.
Dharmendra Modha, IBM’s current project leader, explained that they were attempting to recreate aspects of the brain such as emotion, perception, and sensation, in addition to cognition, by “reverse engineering brains.”
The SyNAPSE system utilises two “neurosynaptic computing chips”, and both of them have 256 computational cores that the scientists have described as an electronic equivalent of neurons.
Any one chip has around 262,144 programmable synapses, while others contain 65,536 learning synapses. In humans and animals, there are synaptic connections between the brain cells that physically connect themselves in relation to our experience of the world. Processes of learning are essentially the strengthening of connections after they have been established.
A machine isn’t able to solder and de-solder electrical tracks. However, it is able to simulate such a system through “turning up the volume” on vital input signals, while paying less attention to any others.