The US Air Force has teamed up with IBM to develop a supercomputing system that mimics the human brain.

The system, said to be the first of its kind, will rely on a 64-chip array from IBM’s TrueNorth Neurosynaptic System, allowing for pattern recognition and sensory processing power equal to 64 million neurons and 16 billion synapses.

Ultimately, it aims to merge the ‘right brain’ capabilities of IBM’s system with the ‘left brain’ capabilities of a traditional system to optimize efficiency – and, it will run on just 10 watts.

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The US Air Force has teamed up with IBM to develop a supercomputing system that mimics the human brain. The system, said to be the first of its kind, will rely on a 64-chip array from IBM’s TrueNorth Neurosynaptic System

HOW IT WORKS A single TrueNorth processor consists of 5.4 billion transistors wired together to create an array of 1 million digital neurons that communicate with one another via 256 million electrical synapses. The new supercomputing system will use a 64-chip array of IBM’s TrueNorth Neurosynaptic System. This means it will achieve pattern recognition and sensory power with the equivalent of 64 million neurons and 16 billion synapses. But, it requires just 10 watts – or, ‘the energy equivalent of a dim light bulb.’ The system will fit into just a 7-inch (4U-high) space in a server rack. And, a total of eight of these systems will combine to achieve 512 million neurons per rack, according to IBM. Advertisement

IBM’s system is said to act like the right brain, as it can take on sensory processing and pattern recognition tasks, converting data – including images, video, audio, and text – into symbols in real time.

Conventional systems, on the other hand, focus more on language and analytical thinking, like the left brain, according to IBM.

In the new effort, the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) hopes to combine the two.

‘AFRL was the earliest adopter of TrueNorth for converting data into decisions,’ said Daniel S Goddard, director, information directorate, US Air Force Research Lab.

‘The new neurosynaptic system will be used to enable new computing capabilities important to AFRL’s mission to explore, prototype, and demonstrate high-impact, game-changing technologies that enable the Air Force and the nation to maintain its superior technical advantage.’

The system will fit into just a 7-inch (4U-high) space in a server rack.

And, a total of eight of these systems will combine to achieve 512 million neurons per rack, according to IBM.

It’s hoped that this will allow it to be used in sites restricted by size, weight, and power, including mobile and autonomous settings.

Despite its unprecedented capabilities, it will require only the ‘energy equivalent of a dim light bulb.’

IBM’s neurosynaptic system has rapidly evolved over the last few years.

Ultimately, it aims to merge the ‘right brain’ capabilities of IBM’s system with the ‘left brain’ capabilities of a traditional system to optimize efficiency – and, it will run on just 10 watts.

A single process can now generate 1 million digital neurons, communication over 256 million electrical synapses.

In the new effort, the researchers say the system will allow for what’s known as ‘data parallelism,’ as well as ‘model parallelism.’

This means it can run multiple data sources in parallel against the same neural network, or independent neural networks acting as an ensemble to run in parallel on the same data.

‘The evolution of the IBM TrueNorth Neurosynaptic System is a solid proof point in our quest to lead the industry in AI hardware innovation,’ said Dharmendra S. Modha, IBM Fellow, chief scientist, brain-inspired computing, IBM Research – Almaden.

‘Over the last six years, IBM has expanded the number of neurons per system from 256 to more than 64 million – an 800 percent annual increase over six years.’