IBM wants to use their brainlike chip in future mobile devices

A New Generation

IBM is developing a new version of the TrueNorth chip in an effort to make it commercially available in the near future. True North is designed so that it can process data just like a human brain, using special silicon neurons that communicate via electrical spikes. The companies sees the opportunity to use the chip in mobile devices to make them capable of "recognizing anything their owners say, and tracking the environment around them." Essentially, IBM hopes that their chip will make special devices better at speech recognition and image interpretation.

The Future

IBM SVP John Kelly shares that the company is already in discussions with a leading computer systems manufacturer to figure out how they could add the TrueNorth chip to a device as a "co-processor" that never powers down. Also since the team has learned that their artificial neural networks that using spiking neurons don't perform as well as deep learning on similar tasks, they are exploring the possibility of transferring deep learning neural networks onto the chip.