If they have the number right, its only a thousand fold short of the brain computation power and memory. Almost there…
Computers are lauded for their speed and accuracy, but they don't hold a candle to the human brain when it comes to tackling complex mathematical problems, Dharmendra Modha, director of cognitive computing at the IBM Almaden Research Center, said at today's event. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA), the U.S. Defense Department's research arm, last year gave Modha and his colleagues $4.9 million for a project called “SyNAPSE,” through which they are trying to reverse-engineer the brain's computational abilities to better understand its ability to sense, perceive, act, interact, and understand different stimuli. |
“We have no computers today that can begin to approach the awesome power of the human mind,” Modha said. A computer comparable to the human brain, he added, would need to be able to perform more than 38 thousand trillion operations per second [[http://www.petaflop.info/]] and hold about 3,584 terabytes of memory. (IBM's BlueGene supercomputer, one of the worlds' most powerful, has a computational capability of 92 trillion operations per second and 8 terabytes of storage.) |
Although the brain is still not well understood, Modha said, “there is enough quantitative data for us to be able to begin putting together the pieces.” He predicted that by 2018 computers will be able to simulate the workings of the human brain, a breakthrough that will provide researchers with unprecedented insight into how the complex organ operates. |
In addition to boosting computer performance, enhanced understanding of the brain will enable people to communicate directly with machines, whether they are robots or mechanized prosthetic limbs. Primates have already proved that such brain-machine interfaces are possible, Miguel Nicolelis, co-director of Duke University Medical Center's Center for Neuroengineering, said during the conference. The researcher and his colleagues last year successfully implanted electrodes in the brain of a monkey in North Carolina that enabled him to control a robot on a treadmill in Kyoto, Japan. |
Nicolelis and his team have developed a microchip they expect will allow human brains to communicate with robots using only brain signals and enables the bots to return messages directly to the brain, without the use of sight or touch. Nicolelis said that he hopes the technology will be sophisticated enough to implant into a human brain by 2012 and enable a completely quadriplegic patient to walk again. Read more at www.sciam.com |
| Over the last 60 years, ever-smaller generations of transistors have driven exponential growth in computing power. Could molecules, each turned into miniscule computer components, trigger even greater growth in computing over the next 60? |
| Atomic-scale computing, in which computer processes are carried out in a single molecule or using a surface atomic-scale circuit, holds vast promise for the microelectronics industry. |
| Joachim’s team has focused on taking one individual molecule and building up computer components, with the ultimate goal of hosting a logic gate in a single molecule. |
| The team has managed to design a simple logic gate with 30 atoms that perform the same task as 14 transistors, while also exploring the architecture, technology and chemistry needed to achieve computing inside a single molecule and to interconnect molecules.See more at www.physorg.com |
| Google’s stock is now down more than 50% year to date but the Google guys don’t seem to be concerned. Here’s why |
| Most people think the reason is because Google dominates search. But Google is building a new secret weapon that has more to do with the brain than search. |
| The effort is called MapReduce, a simple yet powerful software program that enables Google to use the Internet to think. |
| MapReduce does what our brains do all the time: It categorizes (Maps) key pieces of information, distributes it across its server farm of PCs, and then eliminates (Reduces) irrelevant data (computers–unlike MapReduce and the brain–soak in everything). |
| Does this sound like the perfect computer? Think again. |
| This is not even your typical computer: one that is stable, logical, and failsafe. Instead, it is error prone, strapped together with Velcro (literally) and unreliable |
| IBM has announced it will lead a US government-funded collaboration to make electronic circuits that mimic brains. |
| Part of a field called “cognitive computing”, the research will bring together neurobiologists, computer and materials scientists and psychologists.
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| The resulting technology could be used for large-scale data analysis, decision making or even image recognition.
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| “The mind has an amazing ability to integrate ambiguous information across the senses, and it can effortlessly create the categories of time, space, object, and interrelationship from the sensory data,” |
| “There are no computers that can even remotely approach the remarkable feats the mind performs,” |
| “The key idea of cognitive computing is to engineer mind-like intelligent machines by reverse engineering the structure, dynamics, function and behaviour of the brain.” |
| The longer-term goal is to create a system with the level of complexity of a cat’s brain.
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| The recent economic meltdown has renewed the salience of the question of the relationship between human beings and computers. |
| A survey of various experts in the fields of economics, information science, and artificial intelligence (AI) reveals general agreement that substantial responsibility for the global crisis belongs to people not programs — but beyond that, the consensus breaks down. |
| The effect of advances in information technology on the financial sector raises more questions than it answers: How can transactions understood by few — if any — experts be subject to effective government regulation? |
| Is the current crisis a symptom of human dependency on information-processing machines created by man but now beyond man’s control? |
| The Huffington Post communicated (by email and in interviews) with nine specialists in computers, finance, economics, and artificial intelligence to get their take on these issues. See more at www.huffingtonpost.com |
Consider this a concept that that might have been and may still be, should Steve Jobs get a bit too enamored with The Matrix. It could be the next hot Apple item, leaving the iPod and iPhone in the dust. Designer Paul Micarelli came up with it. |
The Symbiosis™ Neural Interface:Direct brain-computer
link means your mind and computer are one. It sports Intel Fusion™, Quantum Processing that uses the power of the atom to instantly compute at the speed of thought., Holographic Data Storage thanks to the iThink’s tiny internal holochip with an amazing individual capacity of over 666 Yottabytes for seemingly infinite augmented memory, Intra-neural Communication lets you mentally allow or block any kind of signal you want. With the iThink, it wont be long until you are docking yourself like some Borg in the hive collective, rather then docking your iPod. See more at www.transcurve.net |
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