IBM, True North, and Efficiency
October 7, 2014
I read “How IBM Got Brainlike Efficiency from the TrueNorth Chip.” With the loud hoo hah about artificial intelligence, Thailand’s smart taster technology, and content processing systems that purport to understand human communication—it does not surprise me that IBM tries to ride this trend.
Instead of an application or live demo, IBM has rolled out the “brain architecture” of its TrueNorth chip. This is silicon. The chip is described by the IEEE article as “neuromorphic,” a flashy bit of jargon.
The idea is that the chip is “brain inspired.” The write up reports:
TrueNorth, consists of 1 million programmable neurons and 256 million programmable synapses conveying signals between the digital neurons. Each of the chip’s 4,096 neurosynaptic cores includes the entire computing package: memory, computation, and communication. Such architecture helps to bypass the bottleneck in traditional von Neumann computing, where program instructions and operation data cannot pass through the same route simultaneously.
The idea is that troublesome bottlenecks in von Neumann architecture are sidestepped. If true, this is an interesting development. Why wait for quantum computing? Just ring up the local IBM salesperson and order up servers equipped with this breakthrough.
If only this were possible.
The article points out:
One brainlike feature that IBM did not mimic to reduce power consumption was to make TrueNorth’s neurons analog instead of digital. …IBM fabricated its chip using Samsung’s 28-nanometer process technology—typical for manufacturing chips for today’s mobile devices.
There are several questions that occurred to me as I read this article:
- Will IBM be able to deliver an actual product based on this chip?
- When will the programming tools become available for this brain-like architecture?
- What about supporting components? What will be available and when?
- How will IBM maintain control of the chip’s innovations if third parties are involved in the manufacturing, componentization, and assembly of servers?
Worth monitoring.
Stephen E Arnold, September 30, 2014
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One Response to “IBM, True North, and Efficiency”
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