IBM, Partners Aim To Build Brain-Like Computer Systems

November 24th, 2008

IBM , in collaboration with five universities, announced plans Thursday to create computing systems that simulate and emulate the brain’s abilities for sensation, perception, action, interaction and cognition while rivaling its low power consumption and compact size. The goal is to solve the problem of information management.IBM and its collaborators — Stanford University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cornell University, Columbia University Medical Center, and University of California-Merced — have been awarded $4.9 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for the first phase of DARPA’s Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) initiative.

According to IDC, digital data is growing 60 percent each year, giving businesses access to incredible new streams of information. But without the ability to monitor, analyze and react to this information in real time, most of its value may be lost. Until the data is captured and analyzed, decisions or actions may be delayed.

Cognitive computing offers the promise of systems that can integrate and analyze vast amounts of data from many sources in the blink of an eye, allowing businesses or individuals to make rapid decisions in time to have a significant impact.

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