IBM unveils new chip designed to work like human brain

Low-power, brain-inspired chips could be used in mobile phones to do object recognition. [Photo: research.ibm.com]

IBM has unveiled a brain-inspired chip that the company says has the potential to make your smartphone as powerful as a supercomputer.

The chip, code-named TrueNorth, processes data in a similar fashion as the human brain.

"Our architecture is designed to approximate the structure and function of the brain in silicon, while being efficient in terms of power," said Dharmendra Modha, IBM Research Fellow and chief scientist on brain-inspiring computing.

Containing one million programmable neurons, 256 million synapses and 4,096 neurosynaptic cores, TrueNorth processes data much faster than traditional chips. It is smart enough to memorize information and learn, so devices with the chip can be trained to do object recognition on visual and auditory sources that now usually requires a dedicated server.

Designed to operate only when it needs to, the chip runs with low power - equivalent to that of a battery from a hearing aid. This feature opens vast opportunities to use the chip on mobile phones and other devices with limited power sources.

With related software in development, IBM hopes the cognitive chip can benefit fields like public safety, medical imaging, real-time video analysis, olfactory detection, and digital pathology.

IBM first introduced a brain-inspired chip in 2011. The new chip has significantly more neurosynaptic cores, synapses and neurons than its predecessor.