According to Dharmendra S. Modha, a researcher at IBM, TrueNorth's neurons could revolutionize system architecture. His report published in IBM Research provides the overview of what TrueNorth is all about.
Modha explains that six years ago university partners and IBM began their effort to build a computer with a brain-inspired architecture. From neuroscience to supercomputing the project evolved through different phases. A new architecture was designed as well as a new programming language together with algorithms and applications. The present phase of the project, according to Modha, is the design of the TrueNorth processor.
Modha said that the research team was able to shrink the neuron synaptic core by 100-fold in power and by 15-fold in an area. The scientists have tiled 4,096 cores via an on-chip network. The TrueNorth chip contains in its internal architecture the equivalent of with "one million neurons and 256 million synapses", according to Modha.
Cade Metz, Wired senior staff writer visited the research facility and described on Monday, August 17, what he saw. According to him, Modha walked him to the front of the room to see the new IBM chip up close. Resting on a table against the wall, the processor is about the size of a bathroom medicine cabinet.
Thanks to the translucent plastic on the outside, the Wired's senior staff writer could see the computer chips and the circuit boards, which, according to him, it looks like a prop from a '70s sci-fi movie. However, Modha describes the processor differently. He said that the processor is the digital equivalent "of the brain of a small rodent."
The IBM machine at the front of the room, Metz wrote, is in reality composed of 48 separate machines, each featuring its own TrueNorth processors. Several websites that took to the rodent comparison came to report that IBM has designed a "rat brain"-like a chip to power the phones of tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Modha explains the possible applications that might result. According to him, this revolutionary brain-like architecture can solve a wide range of problems from audition and vision, to "multi-sensory fusion." Of course, among the potential applications is also included making smartphones, as Wired put it.
Modha said that portable devices like sensor networks, smartphones, robots, self-driving automobiles, medical imaging, digital pathology, public safety, olfactory detection and real-time video analysis are one side of the future applications. The other side will be synaptic supercomputers and "multimedia processing on the cloud".
