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IBM to Develop Neuromorphic Machine Tech for DARPA

John Jainschigg | Date: 08-18-09 | Comments

The SyNAPSE program's goal: chips that work like brains and can handle huge amounts of data.

In early August, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency made a $16.1 million award to IBM for work on the SyNAPSE project, which stands for Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics. The SyNAPSE program's explicit goal is to propose a new architecture for learning and sensory machines that can scale to biological levels�in effect, chips that work like brains and can handle huge amounts of data.

They aren't kidding, either. The DARPA project scope requires respondents to propose hardware, architecture, mechanisms for simulating the function of circuits, and environmental tools for training the brains; and the so-called Phase 0 metrics by which proofs of concept will be go/no-go evaluated are entirely neuroanatomical. They're talking about building synaptic components that work like nerve cells, demonstrating learning in response to the timing of electrical spike-trains used as input. Subsequent phases detail requirements to create working brains with capabilities roughly equal to those of small mammals, larger mammals and eventually humans.

My favorite part in this marvelously deadpan document, from final phase requirements: "Describe a high-level, conceptual electronics implementation capable of supporting the neuromorphic architecture of 10^14 synapses, 10^10 neurons ..., total power less than 1kw and total volume less than two liters, including interfaces for sensory inputs and motor outputs."

They did not, I note, include anything about the Three Laws of Robotics in the BAA scope.

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