danaguesswho
The Force is Strong With This One
Cat licked, now computers tackle human brain
Man with Electrode Wires on Head
(Adrianna Williams/Corbis)
Scientists say that the brain's ability to interact with complex environments, despite consuming less power than a light bulb, is "awe-inspiring", and they are struggling to understand the process
Mike Harvey, Technology Correspondent
Supercomputers complex enough to think like human beings may be only a decade away, researchers at IBM have said.
Scientists in pursuit of machines that mimic a brain — a staple of science fiction but in practice a supremely difficult technological feat — have used a huge supercomputer to simulate the processes carried out by a cat’s cerebral cortex.
The computer simulated the flow of data through more than one billion neurons and ten trillion synapses, exceeding the activity inside a cat’s brain, according to researchers.
IBM scientists also said that they have created an algorithm called BlueMatter aimed at mapping the vast number of connections inside a human brain. Researchers hope that the ability to map the human brain will lead to a proper understanding of how it processes information.
Related Links
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* Dell unveils new low-cost supercomputer
Dharmendra Modha, manager of IBM’s cognitive computing initiative, said that the combined breakthroughs meant that computers capable of mimicking the human brain’s power and efficiency could be only ten years away. Dr Modha is leading a project in IBM with researchers from five leading universities trying to learn how the human brain computes, with the intention of building a cognitive microprocessor to do the same thing.
Although the world’s most powerful supercomputers can do inhumanly fast feats of calculation, they cannot perform the sort of problem-solving done routinely by the average person.
Josephine Cheng, IBM fellow and lab director of IBM Research, said: “Learning from the brain is an attractive way to overcome power and density challenges faced in computing.” She added: “As the digital and physical worlds continue to merge and computing becomes more embedded in the fabric of our daily lives, it’s imperative that we create a more intelligent computing system that can help us make sense of the vast amount of information that’s increasingly available to us, much the way our brains can quickly interpret and act on complex tasks.”
Dr Modha and his fellow scientists are combining supercomputing, neuroscience, and nanotechnology research in their attempt to reverse-engineer the human brain. Scientists have previously simulated 40 per cent of a mouse’s brain in 2006, a rat’s full brain in 2007, and 1 per cent of a human’s cerebral cortex this year, using progressively bigger supercomputers. Dr Modha told the San Jose Mercury News: “The brain has awe-inspiring capabilities. It can react or interact with complex, real-world environments, in a context-dependent way. And yet it consumes less power than a light bulb and it occupies less space than a two-litre bottle of soda.”
Jim Olds, a neuroscientist and director of the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University, said neuroscientists have been amassing data about how the brain works without a way to tie it together.
“We’ve made tremendous advances in collecting data, but we don’t have a collective theory yet for how this complex organ called the brain produces things like Shakespeare’s sonnets and Mozart’s symphonies,” he said. “The holy grail for neuroscientists is to map activity from single nerve cells, which they know about, into how billions of nerve cells act in concert.”
Whereas home computers have just one or two processors, IBM used a supercomputer with 147,456 processors and 144 terabytes of main memory — 100,000 times more than an average PC — to carry out the brain simulation.
The latest breakthroughs were presented at a conference in Portland, Oregon.
Trillions of calculations in the blink of an eye
• The fastest computer on the planet can perform 1,759 trillion calculations per second
• The US Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s high-performance Jaguar XT5 computer, built by Cray Inc, has claimed the title after a $19.9 million upgrade
• The Jaguar supercomputer posted a performance speed of 1.759 petaflops (the measure of a computer’s processing speed). In second place, with a speed of 1.04 petaflops, came IBM's Roadrunner system
• The US Department of Energy owns both Jaguar and Roadrunner, but uses them for different purposes. Jaguar is an “open science” tool for peer-reviewed research on a wide range of subjects. Roadrunner is used mostly for complex and classified evaluation of US nuclear weapons
• These supercomputers allow researchers to run endless “what-if” scenarios with increasingly fine detail. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, is using the Oak Ridge computers to develop high-resolution models to predict climate change
• Roadrunner recently mapped the largest family tree of HIV ever produced in an attempt to develop a vaccine for the disease. By comparing the evolutionary history of more than 10,000 genetic sequences from more than 400 people with HIV, researchers hope to create a vaccine that recognises the virus before the body's immune system reacts to — and mutates — it.
“Science is moving more toward higher levels of complexity,” said Arden Bement, director of the National Science Foundation. The models and simulations created by these supercomputers “let you get closer to the truth”, he added
Please read full article here http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article6924179.ece
this is the full article but you won't get much more than what I have posted .....
Man with Electrode Wires on Head
(Adrianna Williams/Corbis)
Scientists say that the brain's ability to interact with complex environments, despite consuming less power than a light bulb, is "awe-inspiring", and they are struggling to understand the process
Mike Harvey, Technology Correspondent
Supercomputers complex enough to think like human beings may be only a decade away, researchers at IBM have said.
Scientists in pursuit of machines that mimic a brain — a staple of science fiction but in practice a supremely difficult technological feat — have used a huge supercomputer to simulate the processes carried out by a cat’s cerebral cortex.
The computer simulated the flow of data through more than one billion neurons and ten trillion synapses, exceeding the activity inside a cat’s brain, according to researchers.
IBM scientists also said that they have created an algorithm called BlueMatter aimed at mapping the vast number of connections inside a human brain. Researchers hope that the ability to map the human brain will lead to a proper understanding of how it processes information.
Related Links
* Supercomputer with power of 2m laptops
* Dell unveils new low-cost supercomputer
Dharmendra Modha, manager of IBM’s cognitive computing initiative, said that the combined breakthroughs meant that computers capable of mimicking the human brain’s power and efficiency could be only ten years away. Dr Modha is leading a project in IBM with researchers from five leading universities trying to learn how the human brain computes, with the intention of building a cognitive microprocessor to do the same thing.
Although the world’s most powerful supercomputers can do inhumanly fast feats of calculation, they cannot perform the sort of problem-solving done routinely by the average person.
Josephine Cheng, IBM fellow and lab director of IBM Research, said: “Learning from the brain is an attractive way to overcome power and density challenges faced in computing.” She added: “As the digital and physical worlds continue to merge and computing becomes more embedded in the fabric of our daily lives, it’s imperative that we create a more intelligent computing system that can help us make sense of the vast amount of information that’s increasingly available to us, much the way our brains can quickly interpret and act on complex tasks.”
Dr Modha and his fellow scientists are combining supercomputing, neuroscience, and nanotechnology research in their attempt to reverse-engineer the human brain. Scientists have previously simulated 40 per cent of a mouse’s brain in 2006, a rat’s full brain in 2007, and 1 per cent of a human’s cerebral cortex this year, using progressively bigger supercomputers. Dr Modha told the San Jose Mercury News: “The brain has awe-inspiring capabilities. It can react or interact with complex, real-world environments, in a context-dependent way. And yet it consumes less power than a light bulb and it occupies less space than a two-litre bottle of soda.”
Jim Olds, a neuroscientist and director of the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University, said neuroscientists have been amassing data about how the brain works without a way to tie it together.
“We’ve made tremendous advances in collecting data, but we don’t have a collective theory yet for how this complex organ called the brain produces things like Shakespeare’s sonnets and Mozart’s symphonies,” he said. “The holy grail for neuroscientists is to map activity from single nerve cells, which they know about, into how billions of nerve cells act in concert.”
Whereas home computers have just one or two processors, IBM used a supercomputer with 147,456 processors and 144 terabytes of main memory — 100,000 times more than an average PC — to carry out the brain simulation.
The latest breakthroughs were presented at a conference in Portland, Oregon.
Trillions of calculations in the blink of an eye
• The fastest computer on the planet can perform 1,759 trillion calculations per second
• The US Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s high-performance Jaguar XT5 computer, built by Cray Inc, has claimed the title after a $19.9 million upgrade
• The Jaguar supercomputer posted a performance speed of 1.759 petaflops (the measure of a computer’s processing speed). In second place, with a speed of 1.04 petaflops, came IBM's Roadrunner system
• The US Department of Energy owns both Jaguar and Roadrunner, but uses them for different purposes. Jaguar is an “open science” tool for peer-reviewed research on a wide range of subjects. Roadrunner is used mostly for complex and classified evaluation of US nuclear weapons
• These supercomputers allow researchers to run endless “what-if” scenarios with increasingly fine detail. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, is using the Oak Ridge computers to develop high-resolution models to predict climate change
• Roadrunner recently mapped the largest family tree of HIV ever produced in an attempt to develop a vaccine for the disease. By comparing the evolutionary history of more than 10,000 genetic sequences from more than 400 people with HIV, researchers hope to create a vaccine that recognises the virus before the body's immune system reacts to — and mutates — it.
“Science is moving more toward higher levels of complexity,” said Arden Bement, director of the National Science Foundation. The models and simulations created by these supercomputers “let you get closer to the truth”, he added
Please read full article here http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article6924179.ece
this is the full article but you won't get much more than what I have posted .....
