IBM And US Air Force Are Building A Brain-Inspired AI Supercomputer

IBM and the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), on 23rd of June, announced that they are developing a brain-inspired supercomputing system. The design and pattern of the system are very similar to the real brain structure. Its sensory processing power is equivalent of 64 million neurons and 16 billion synapses, while the processor component will consume the energy of merely 10 watts.

IBM TrueNorth Neurosynaptic system’s 64-chip array will power the system. IBM believes that TrueNorth’s designs will be much efficient than the systems that develop conventional chips. TrueNorth system can convert data like images and videos into symbols in real time.

The system will facilitate ‘data parallelism’ and ‘model parallelism.’ The system is devised such that if one part stops working, other will continue without any disturbance. Though not entirely a brain, it is very similar.
As the right brain is for perception and the left for symbol processing, AFRL combines these two capabilities into the conventional computer system. “AFRL was the earliest adopter of TrueNorth for converting data into decisions,” said Daniel S. Goddard, director, information Directorate, U.S. Air Force Research Lab.

This Neurosynaptic system will assist AFRL’s technological designings for Air Force because of such technical advances on its side.

Dharmendra S. Modha, chief scientist of this research, said that the advancement in IBM TrueNorth marks their possibility of leading in AI Hardware Innovation industry. He also mentioned that the company has increased the number of neurons per system from just 256 to 64 million, in last six years.

TrueNorth Neurosynaptic System was initially worked upon under the authority of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’S (DARPA) ‘syNAPSE’ program.