When I read (and wrote about) the recent controversy between Modha and Markram, I had this inescapable déjà vu feeling….weird, where did I hear that somebody already simulated a “brain” of the scale of the human brain? Of course!…. Eugene Izhikevich, a very bright (and VERY funny) neuroscientist that, in 2007, visited our center CELEST. During that visit, he showed what at that time (in 2005, and may be up to today) was one of the “largest scale” neural simulation. Read the rest of this entry »

In my recent post, I commented on IBM’s announcement at the Supercomputing Conference (SC09) in Portland, Ore., that they had simulated a brain with the number of neurons and synapses present in a cat’s brain. It looks like the controversial statement of IBM being finally able to “simulate a cat’s brain” (or however their original statements has been distorted) has been stirring some more comments. Henry Markram, the leader of the Blue Brain project at EPFL, Lausanne, sent an open letter to IBM CTO Bernard Meyerson, along with several media (UK Daily Mail, Die Zeit, Wired, Discover, Forbes). One big question is: was Modha’s statement somehow distorted? Did he actually simply claim that IBM simulated a system that has the same number of neurons of a cat, as opposed to simulate “the cat’s brain?”. This is an important distinction. Anyway, Neurdons must know, so here it is! Enjoy!

IEEE Spectrum has published an interesting article titled “IBM Unveils a New Brain Simulator: A big step forward in a project that aims for thinking chips”. The post describes IBM’s Almaden Research Center latest simulation effort announced at the Supercomputing Conference (SC09), where they unveiled that “that they have created the largest brain simulation to date on a supercomputer. The number of neurons and synapses in the simulation exceed those in a cat’s brain; previous simulations have reached only the level of mouse and rat brains.” Read the rest of this entry »

Dharmendra S Modha is the Principal Investigator in one of the three DARPA SyNAPSE grants, the one awarded to IBM. Modha is the Manager of the Cognitive Computing facility at IBM. Here is the full article from his blog.

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IBM Researchers Look to Build ‘Global Brain’ Computer

IT Infrastructure
By Scott Ferguson
2008-11-20

IBM is awarded one of the SyNAPSE grants

IBM researchers and scientists from several major universities, with the aid of a $4.9 million grant from DARPA, will look to use nanoscale technology to create new types of computers capable of cognitive thinking. The goal of the IBM research is to find whether new types of IT infrastructure and computers can not only collect data but use that data to solve problems and make decisions in the same way the human brain solves problems.
While a computer with artificial intelligence such as HAL of “2001: A Space Odyssey” remains the stuff of science fiction, IBM researchers are looking to develop technologies that will bring cognitive abilities to a new class of computers.
IBM researchers, along with scientists from several major universities, have been awarded a $4.9 million grant from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to see if they can develop computers with the ability to not only collect data but solve problems in much the same way a human brain does.

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