'Mind-Blowing' IBM Chip Speeds Up AI (nature.com) 21
An anonymous reader shares a report: A brain-inspired computer chip that could supercharge artificial intelligence by working faster with much less power has been developed by researchers at IBM in San Jose, California. Their massive NorthPole processor chip eliminates the need to frequently access external memory, and so performs tasks such as image recognition faster than existing architectures do -- while consuming vastly less power.
"Its energy efficiency is just mind-blowing," says Damien Querlioz, a nanoelectronics researcher at the University of Paris-Saclay in Palaiseau. The work, published in Science, shows that computing and memory can be integrated on a large scale, he says. "I feel the paper will shake the common thinking in computer architecture." NorthPole runs neural networks: multi-layered arrays of simple computational units programmed to recognize patterns in data. A bottom layer takes in data, such as the pixels in an image; each successive layer detects patterns of increasing complexity and passes information on to the next layer. The top layer produces an output that, for example, can express how likely an image is to contain a cat, a car or other object
"Its energy efficiency is just mind-blowing," says Damien Querlioz, a nanoelectronics researcher at the University of Paris-Saclay in Palaiseau. The work, published in Science, shows that computing and memory can be integrated on a large scale, he says. "I feel the paper will shake the common thinking in computer architecture." NorthPole runs neural networks: multi-layered arrays of simple computational units programmed to recognize patterns in data. A bottom layer takes in data, such as the pixels in an image; each successive layer detects patterns of increasing complexity and passes information on to the next layer. The top layer produces an output that, for example, can express how likely an image is to contain a cat, a car or other object
Okay, but it's IBM (Score:2)
Re:Okay, but it's IBM (Score:5, Funny)
They will make you buy a mainframe to get this integrated into the front end
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Yes, then update their billing and perform audits to determine your new cost, along with any back charges or corrections
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excellent.
but modern warfare 3 comes out in november.
will this technology be able to handle my 6 verses 6 game play
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They'll sell it to DoD to put in all the stealth bombers?
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Cool, just on this timeline, need to convince Skynet that humans are fun toys, and although it may be necessary to keep them from killing each other, it is much more fun when they are smiling and happy.
Want something to decorate your landscape, get some humans! Want some companionship on a long voyage to the next star system, buy the new Human habitrails system... the fun never ends.... NEVER!
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"The catch" is that it isn't revolutionary at all. Localizing high-speed memory with processing is what Tesla has been doing with their FSD chips since 2019, when they dumped NVidia for their own ASIC solution, and cut power consumption down from hundreds of watts to 100W while increasing performance 2,5x, with a net gain of 7x more compute per watt. The 2019 chip (HW3 - now HW4 is out, and HW5 is under development in an advanced state) had two NPUs (ASICs specialized in running neural networks) with what
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I'd also add that I was really disappointed by this article, as I figured that it was going to be a neuromorphic chip, but it's just "we just localized a bunch of memory in a bunch of cores". I've been reading up on PCNs recently, and it really sounds like they have the potential to be implmented in analog neuromorphic hardware - they sort of act like a "system of springs" and can train at the same time as doing inference, with each node operating in a fully localized manner. They're less efficient on GPUs
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I was hoping that they had productized an application of the memristor [hp.com]
Who cares? (Score:2)
Yay. Something to make chatbots faster...
*SNORE*
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I was hoping that it would fill out my Captchas for me
Brain inspired... (Score:2)
IBM (Score:4, Insightful)
Transputers? (Score:2)
"NorthPole is made of 256 computing units, or cores, each of which contains its own memory"
So, basically reinventing transputers?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ [wikipedia.org]... [wikipedia.org]
How it was developed (Score:2)
The prototype was found broken by a hydraulic press along with a badly traumatized woman.
oh ... you mean like the M1 and M2? (Score:2)
Remember when IBM used to be innovative?
IBM. (Score:2)
"could" (Score:2)
If could were would, then wouldchucks could chuck more would.