August 18, 2011

IBM Reveals Cognitive Computing Chips

by Michael Feldman

The company that brought Jeopardy cyber-champ Watson to the world has come up with some even brainier technology. IBM has unveiled prototypes of microprocessors that are being dubbed "cognitive computing chips." According to IBM, the hardware is made up of neural circuits and are designed to mimic the brain's ability to perceive sensory input, understand it, and take action based on that understanding.

To emulate human-level thinking, Watson used clever software on conventional hardware, which could be described as sort of a brute force approach. In contrast, these new chips are designed to behave fundamentally like our own brains, being able process sensory input in a vastly parallel fashion, create correlations, learn from experience, and adapt its processing dynamically.