{"id":16881,"date":"2015-09-03T16:56:52","date_gmt":"2015-09-03T23:56:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/startup-claims-a-breakthrough-in-brain-like-computing-on-chips"},"modified":"2017-06-04T11:43:39","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T18:43:39","slug":"startup-claims-a-breakthrough-in-brain-like-computing-on-chips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/startup-claims-a-breakthrough-in-brain-like-computing-on-chips","title":{"rendered":"Startup claims a breakthrough in brain-like computing on chips"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\\'blog-photo\\' href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/startup-claims-a-breakthrough-in-brain-like-computing-on-chips.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A small, Santa Fe, New Mexico-based company called <a href=\"http:\/\/knowm.org\/\">Knowm<\/a> claims it will soon begin commercializing a state-of-the-art technique for building computing chips that learn. Other companies, including HP <a class=\"exit_trigger_set\" href=\"http:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/hpq\/\"> HPQ <\/a> and IBM <a class=\"exit_trigger_set\" href=\"http:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/ibm\/\"> IBM<\/a>, have already invested in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.research.ibm.com\/articles\/brain-chip.shtml\">developing these so-called brain-based chips<\/a>, but Knowm says it has just achieved a major technological breakthrough that it should be able to push into production hopefully within a few years.<\/p>\n<p>The basis for Knowm\u2019s work is a piece of hardware called a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Memristor\">memristor<\/a>, which functions (warning: oversimplification coming) by mimicking synapses in the brain. Rather than committing certain information to a software program and traditional computing memory, memristors are able to \u201clearn\u201d by strengthening the electrical charge between two resistors (the \u201cristor\u201d part of <em>memristor<\/em>) much like synapses strengthen connections between commonly used neurons in the brain.<\/p>\n<p>Done correctly\u2014and this is the result that HP and IBM are after\u2014memristors can make computer chips much smarter, but also very energy efficient. That could mean data centers that don\u2019t use as much energy as small towns, as well as more viable robotics, driverless cars, and other autonomous devices. Alex Nugent, Knowm\u2019s founder and CEO, says memristors\u2014especially the ones his company is working on\u2014offer \u201ca massive leap in efficiency\u201d over traditional CPUs, GPUs, and other hardware <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.technet.com\/b\/inside_microsoft_research\/archive\/2015\/02\/23\/machine-learning-gets-big-boost-from-ultra-efficient-convolutional-neural-network-accelerator.aspx\">now used to power artificial intelligence workloads<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/fortune.com\/2015\/09\/03\/memristor-brain-like-chips\/\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A small, Santa Fe, New Mexico-based company called Knowm claims it will soon begin commercializing a state-of-the-art technique for building computing chips that learn. Other companies, including HP HPQ and IBM IBM, have already invested in developing these so-called brain-based chips, but Knowm says it has just achieved a major technological breakthrough that it should [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,6,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-robotics-ai","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16881"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64310,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16881\/revisions\/64310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}