A cognitive computer is a computer that hardwires

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...

and machine-learning algorithms into an integrated circuit (printed circuit board) that closely reproduces the behavior of the human brain. It generally adopts a

neuromorphic engineering Neuromorphic engineering, also known as neuromorphic computing, is the use of electronic circuits to mimic neuro-biological architectures present in the nervous system. A neuromorphic computer/chip is any device that uses physical artificial ...

approach. Synonyms are neuromorphic chip and cognitive chip. An example of an cognitive computer implemented using

neural network A neural network is a network or circuit of biological neurons, or, in a modern sense, an artificial neural network, composed of artificial neurons or nodes. Thus, a neural network is either a biological neural network, made up of biological ...

s and

deep learning Deep learning (also known as deep structured learning) is part of a broader family of machine learning methods based on artificial neural networks with representation learning. Learning can be supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised. ...

techniques is IBM's

Watson Watson may refer to: Companies * Actavis, a pharmaceutical company formerly known as Watson Pharmaceuticals * A.S. Watson Group, retail division of Hutchison Whampoa * Thomas J. Watson Research Center, IBM research center * Watson Systems, make ...

machine. A subsequent development by IBM is the 2014 TrueNorth microchip architecture, which is designed to be closer in structure to the human brain than the

von Neumann architecture The von Neumann architecture — also known as the von Neumann model or Princeton architecture — is a computer architecture based on a 1945 description by John von Neumann, and by others, in the '' First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC''. T ...

used in conventional computers. In 2017

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 ser ...

also announced its own version of a cognitive chip in "Loihi", which it intended to be available to university and research labs in 2018. Intel,

Qualcomm Qualcomm () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. It owns patents critical to the 5G, ...

, and others are improving neuromorphic processors steadily, Intel with its Pohoiki Beach and Springs systems.

IBM TrueNorth chip

TrueNorth was a neuromorphic

CMOS Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss", ) is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) fabrication process that uses complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSF ...

integrated circuit An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...

produced by IBM in 2014. It is a manycore processor

network on a chip A network on a chip or network-on-chip (NoC or )This article uses the convention that "NoC" is pronounced . Therefore, it uses the convention "a" for the indefinite article corresponding to NoC ("a NoC"). Other sources may pronounce it as a ...

design, with 4096 cores, each one having 256 programmable simulated

neurons A neuron, neurone, or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell that communicates with other cells via specialized connections called synapses. The neuron is the main component of nervous tissue in all animals except sponges and placozoa ...

for a total of just over a million neurons. In turn, each neuron has 256 programmable "

synapse In the nervous system, a synapse is a structure that permits a neuron (or nerve cell) to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another neuron or to the target effector cell. Synapses are essential to the transmission of nervous impulses from ...

s" that convey the signals between them. Hence, the total number of programmable synapses is just over 268 million (2²⁸). Its basic

transistor count The transistor count is the number of transistors in an electronic device (typically on a single substrate or "chip"). It is the most common measure of integrated circuit complexity (although the majority of transistors in modern microprocessors ...

is 5.4 billion.

Details

Since memory, computation, and communication are handled in each of the 4096 neurosynaptic cores, TrueNorth circumvents the von Neumann-architecture bottleneck and is very energy-efficient, with IBM claiming a power consumption of 70 milliwatts and a power density that is 1/10,000th of conventional microprocessors. The

SyNAPSE In the nervous system, a synapse is a structure that permits a neuron (or nerve cell) to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another neuron or to the target effector cell. Synapses are essential to the transmission of nervous impulses from ...

chip operates at lower temperatures and power because it only draws power necessary for computation.

Skyrmion In particle theory, the skyrmion () is a topologically stable field configuration of a certain class of non-linear sigma models. It was originally proposed as a model of the nucleon by (and named after) Tony Skyrme in 1961. As a topological sol ...

s have been proposed as models of the synapse on a chip. The neurons are emulated using a Linear-Leak Integrate-and-Fire (LLIF) model, a simplification of the leaky

integrate-and-fire Biological neuron models, also known as a spiking neuron models, are mathematical descriptions of the properties of certain cells in the nervous system that generate sharp electrical potentials across their cell membrane, roughly one millisecon ...

model. According to IBM, it doesn't have a clock and operates on unary numbers and computes by counting up to a maximum of 19 bits. The said cores are event-driven by using both (a)synchronous logic and are interconnected through an asynchronous

packet-switched In telecommunications, packet switching is a method of grouping data into '' packets'' that are transmitted over a digital network. Packets are made of a header and a payload. Data in the header is used by networking hardware to direct the pack ...

mesh network on chip (NOC). IBM developed a new network to program and use TrueNorth. It included simulator, a new programming language, an integrated programming environment and even libraries. This lack of

backward compatibility Backward compatibility (sometimes known as backwards compatibility) is a property of an operating system, product, or technology that allows for interoperability with an older legacy system, or with input designed for such a system, especiall ...

with any previous technology (e.g. C++ compilers) poses serious

vendor lock-in In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products, unable to use another vendor without substantial switching costs. The use of open standards and alternat ...

risks and other adverse consequences that may prevent it from commercialization in the future.

Research

In 2018 a cluster of TrueNorth network-linked to a master computer were used in stereo vision research that attempted to extract the depth of rapidly moving objects in a scene.

Intel Loihi chip

Intel's self-learning neuromorphic chip, named Loihi (produced in 2017), perhaps named after the Hawaiian seamount Lōʻihi, offers substantial power efficiency designed after the human brain. Intel claims Loihi is about 1000 times more energy efficient than the general-purpose computing power needed to train the neural networks that rival Loihi's performance. In theory, this would support both machine learning training and inference on the same silicon independently of a cloud connection, and more efficient than using

convolutional neural network In deep learning, a convolutional neural network (CNN, or ConvNet) is a class of artificial neural network (ANN), most commonly applied to analyze visual imagery. CNNs are also known as Shift Invariant or Space Invariant Artificial Neural Netwo ...

s (CNNs) or

s. Intel points to a system for monitoring a person's heartbeat, taking readings after events such as exercise or eating, and using the cognitive computing chip to normalize the data and work out the ‘normal’ heartbeat. It can then spot abnormalities, but also deal with any new events or conditions. The first iteration of the Loihi chip was made using Intel's 14 nm fabrication process, and houses 128 clusters of 1,024

artificial neuron An artificial neuron is a mathematical function conceived as a model of biological neurons, a neural network. Artificial neurons are elementary units in an artificial neural network. The artificial neuron receives one or more inputs (representing ...

s each for a total of 131,072 simulated neurons. This offers around 130 million

s, which is still a rather long way from the human brain's 800

trillion ''Trillion'' is a number with two distinct definitions: *1,000,000,000,000, i.e. one million million, or (ten to the twelfth power), as defined on the short scale. This is now the meaning in both American and British English. * 1,000,000,000,00 ...

synapses, and behind IBM's TrueNorth, which has around 256 million by using 64 by 4,096 cores. Loihi is now available for research purposes among more than 40 academic research groups as a USB form factor. Recent developments include a 64 core chip named Pohoiki Beach (after Isaac Hale Beach Park, also known as Pohoiki). In October 2019, researchers from

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...

published a research paper to demonstrate the energy efficiency of Intel's Loihi in solving Simultaneous localization and mapping. In March 2020, Intel and

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

published a research paper to demonstrate the ability of Intel's Loihi to recognize different

hazardous materials Dangerous goods, abbreviated DG, are substances that when transported are a risk to health, safety, property or the environment. Certain dangerous goods that pose risks even when not being transported are known as hazardous materials ( syllabi ...

, which could eventually aid to "diagnose diseases, detect weapons and

explosive An explosive (or explosive material) is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An expl ...

s, find

narcotic The term narcotic (, from ancient Greek ναρκῶ ''narkō'', "to make numb") originally referred medically to any psychoactive compound with numbing or paralyzing properties. In the United States, it has since become associated with opiates ...

s, and spot signs of smoke and

carbon monoxide Carbon monoxide ( chemical formula CO) is a colorless, poisonous, odorless, tasteless, flammable gas that is slightly less dense than air. Carbon monoxide consists of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom connected by a triple bond. It is the simpl ...

". In September 2021, Intel released Loihi 2, which it claims is roughly same, but faster.

SpiNNaker

SpiNNaker A spinnaker is a sail designed specifically for sailing off the wind on courses between a reach (wind at 90° to the course) to downwind (course in the same direction as the wind). Spinnakers are constructed of lightweight fabric, usually ny ...

(Spiking Neural Network Architecture) is a

massively parallel Massively parallel is the term for using a large number of computer processors (or separate computers) to simultaneously perform a set of coordinated computations in parallel. GPUs are massively parallel architecture with tens of thousands of th ...

manycore Manycore processors are special kinds of multi-core processors designed for a high degree of parallel processing, containing numerous simpler, independent processor cores (from a few tens of cores to thousands or more). Manycore processors are u ...

supercomputer architecture Approaches to supercomputer architecture have taken dramatic turns since the earliest systems were introduced in the 1960s. Early supercomputer architectures pioneered by Seymour Cray relied on compact innovative designs and local parallelism to ...

designed by the Advanced Processor Technologies Research Group at the Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester.

Criticism

Critics argue that a room-sized computer – like the case of Watson – is not a viable alternative to a three-pound human brain. Some also cite the difficulty for a single system to bring so many elements together such as the disparate sources of information as well as computing resources. In 2021, New York Times released the article "What Ever Happened to IBM’s Watson?". They wrote about some costly failures of IBM Watson. One of them, the cancer-related project called Oncology Expert Advisor, was abandoned in 2016 as a costly failure. During the collaboration, IBM Watson could not tap patient data. Watson struggled to decipher doctors’ notes and patient histories.

IBM TrueNorth chip

Details

Research

Intel Loihi chip

SpiNNaker

Criticism

See also

References

Further reading