IBM creates the first supercomputer imitating a brain for the U.S. Air Force

On June 23, 2017 the IBM corporation announced creation for the U.S. Air Force of the first-ever supercomputer imitating a brain. The basis of a system will be formed by the neyromorfny IBM TrueNorth processor.

This chip consists of 5.4 billion transistors distributed on 4096 identical computing cores which are located on one silicon plate and create an array from 1 million digital neurons interacting among themselves through electric synapses. Each core represents something like table 256×256 where columns are neurons, and lines — their branches on which data move. Each neuron can give a signal for one line in each core of this chip. Synapses in such system are intersections of lines and columns. And, as well as in a brain, "force" of synapses is used as a local information warehouse and changes when training. Communication between neurons is performed at the expense of spikes (impulses).

IBM creates the first supercomputer imitating a brain for the U.S. Air Force

According to developers, the processor is capable to distinguish dependences in data and to process touch processes just as it do 64 million neurons and 16 billion synapses in a brain. At the same time the technological solution will consume only 10 W of power. IBM TrueNorth is capable to transform effectively images, audio-and video content or the text from numerous sensors to characters in real time.

In 2014 the IBM corporation signed with the American military the contract for the amount about $550 thousand. The U.S. Air Force became the first organization who signed the agreement with IBM regarding deliveries and tests of the chip such. IBM conducts development of the new supercomputer together with division of the U.S. Air Force of Air Force Research Lab (AFRL).

It is planned that the created server system will find room in a rack 4U, and eight such blocks will provide emulation of 512 million neurons.^[1]

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