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IBM cracks open a new era of computing with brain-like chip: 4096 cores, 1 million neurons, 5.4 billion transistors
- By Sebastian Anthony on August 7, 2014 at 2:00 pm
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Scientists at IBM Research have created by far the most advanced neuromorphic (brain-like) computer chip to date. The chip, called TrueNorth, consists of 1 million programmable neurons and 256 million programmable synapses across 4096 individual neurosynaptic cores. Built on Samsung's 28nm process and with a monstrous transistor count of 5.4 billion, this is one of the largest and most advanced computer chips ever made. Perhaps most importantly, though, TrueNorth is incredibly efficient: The chip consumes just 72 milliwatts at max load, which equates to around 400 billion synaptic operations per second per watt — or about 176,000 times more efficient than a modern CPU running the same brain-like workload, or 769 times more efficient than other state-of-the-art neuromorphic approaches. Yes, IBM is now a big step closer to building a brain on a chip.
The animal brain (which includes the human brain, of course), as you may have heard before, is by far the most efficient computer in the known universe. As you can see in the graph below, the human brain has a "clock speed" (neuron firing speed) measured in tens of hertz, and a total power consumption of around 20 watts. A modern silicon chip, despite having features that are almost on the same tiny scale as biological neurons and synapses, can consume thousands or millions times more energy to perform the same task as a human brain. As we move towards more advanced areas of computing, such as artificial general intelligence and big data analysis — areas that IBM just happens to be deeply involved with — it would really help if we had a silicon chip that was capable of brain-like efficiency.
Enter TrueNorth, the culmination of the six-year-old SyNAPSE project at IBM Research. The work, which has been partly funded by DARPA since 2008, resulted in a prototype chip with just 256 neurons in 2011, and the Corelet programming language in 2013. This new chip is a second-generation version of the 2011 prototype, based on a new process (Samsung 28nm vs. IBM 45nm) and is orders of magnitude more complex, functional, and efficient. TrueNorth is implemented in standard CMOS transistors, just like the CPU in your PC — but that's where the similarities end.
Each TrueNorth chip consists of 4096 neurosynaptic cores arranged in a 64×64 grid. Each core is self-contained, with 256 inputs (axons), 256 outputs (neurons), a big bank of SRAM (which stores the data for each neuron), and a router that allows for any neuron to transmit to any axon up to 255 cores away. Information flows across TrueNorth by way of neural spikes, from axons to neurons, modulated by the programmable synapses between them. This architecture is fundamentally based on Cornell Tech's original work on asynchronous circuit design, which IBM has been refining since 2008. You would definitely call this a non-Von Neumann chip design.
With 256×256 (65,536) configurable synapses per core arranged in a crossbar array, and a 2D mesh network providing interconnectivity between the 4096 cores, we're probably talking about the most massively parallel chip ever made — which is fitting, considering parallelism is one of the reasons animal brains are so effective. Oh, and did I mention that the TrueNorth chip itself can also be used in a symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) setup? IBM has already built a 16-chip system with 16 million neurons and 4 billion synapses.
If you're looking for more details on TrueNorth, an IBM/Cornell Tech research paper was published in Science today – DOI: 10.1126/science.1254642 – "A million spiking-neuron integrated circuit with a scalable communication network and interface". If you're looking for a less technical breakdown of TrueNorth and neuromorphic computing, IBM provided us with a rather nice infographic.
One of the key problems with developing a new chip based on a novel architecture is that you also have to create developer tools and software that actually make efficient use of those thousands of cores and billions of synapses. Fortunately, IBM's already got that covered: Last year it released a specialized programming language (Corelet) and simulator (Compass) that let you program and test your neuromorphic programs before running them on actual hardware.
So, why should I care about TrueNorth?
Ultimately, the main purpose of the SyNAPSE project is to take existing systems that simulate the functionality of the brain in software — such as deep neural networks — and run them on hardware that was specifically designed for the task. As you may already know, dedicated hardware tends to orders of magnitude more efficient than simulating/emulating the hardware in software on a general-purpose CPU. This is why IBM is touting some utterly incredible efficiency figures for TrueNorth. For neural networks with high spike rates and a large number of active synapses, TrueNorth can deliver 400 billion synaptic operations per second (SOPS) per watt. When running the exact same neural network, a general-purpose CPU is 176,000 times less energy efficient, while a state-of-the-art multiprocessor neuromorphic system (48 chips, each with 18 cores) is 769 times less efficient. While it's not directly comparable, the world's most efficient supercomputer only manages around 4.5 billion FLOPS per watt.
At this point, it's worth noting that TrueNorth is pretty much ready to go for commercial applications. On the data center/supercomputer side of things, IBM already has dozens of big data solutions — such as Watson — that could be dramatically enhanced by TrueNorth. For consumers, the fact that TrueNorth consumes much less power than conventional Von Neumann chips could be significant. While TrueNorth isn't going to run your operating system any time soon, it would make a fantastically efficient coprocessor to handle sensor input, computer vision, AI (self-driving cars), and other emerging spheres in personal/wearable computing.
Neural networks are fantastic things, but historically they operate on hugely inefficient clusters of conventional computers. With TrueNorth's truly novel architecture, that changes — with TrueNorth, IBM is now a big step closer to building a brain on a chip, and that could be big news for the future of computing.
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The fact that this tech is "pretty much ready to go for commercial applications" makes it 176,000 times more exciting.
Syed Tariq
Haha..:D Peed my my pants laughing at this one..:D
do we need to wait for 176.000 years before it can reach brain performance ?
I've been wishing for that all my life, but I believe it is impossible no matter how far tech goes. If you upload your brain to a computer you'd probably be making a copy of yourself, but not moving yourself. So you might die at that moment, a replica of you will exist. No different than cloning yourself and then committing suicide leaving the clone.
Does this mean I'll be able to upload my brain to a chip before I die so that I may live forever?
http://www.mrseb.co.uk/ Sebastian Anthony
I would say this definitely gets us CLOSER to that. But 1 million neurons is a long way off the billions of neurons in your brain.
But, having said that, I'm fairly certain that we'll get brain-uploading before we die (assuming you're not 50+ right now).
So what you're saying, is we can expect Ghost in the Shell to become reality around 2060 or so… sweet :D
http://www.mrseb.co.uk/ Sebastian Anthony
Yep, somewhere between 2030 and 2050 for the first human-like machine intelligence, I think. (Though that's not the same as brain uploading — but it could happen around the same kind of timespan.)
I just really, really hope that ExtremeTech is still around when it happens — because I want to write about it!
Pfft, why write when you can demonstrate and then publish FROM the internet lol
Marc Guillot
I don't know about that. Those artificial neurones are different from biological neurones: they are organized on fixed grids while biological neurones have a very variable number of connections, someones to a very far neurones.
It will be difficult to translate our rich and variable connection neurones to artificial neurones chip (they will need to be something more similar to a FPGA neurone field than this chip).
Besides, we will need an incredibly accurate scan of our brains to detect our connections and their weights.
Probably someday we will get there, but I'm afraid that it will take something more than a few decades.
Ken B
In order to map the entire brain, it would probably have to be done simultaneously from virtually every neuron at a certain time. One possibility might be billions of nanites injected in the blood stream acting as hemoglobin. When they release oxygen at each cell in the body they also map and log the cell and it's precise location in the body.
Sending out a unique signal through all the neurons, small enough to not alter or damage the cell, but strong enough to be affected by it's memory, nearby nanites might pick and log the the affected signals. Each nanite will contain a tiny piece of the puzzle, and analyzing it's X,Y,Z position, timecode, and any unique signals they picked up, it might just be possible to map the brain.
Surely this is no technology we have today, but it's the most concrete idea I can get on how it can be done. Such scan would probably never be 100% complete.
Now let's say using a 3D-print technology, printing cells in a gel, you could in theory rebuild a copy of a brain cell by cell with the unique pattern. Finally nanites will come in action again with a secondary function to implant a memory at each cell.
it would probably have to be done simultaneously from virtually every neuron at a certain time
No it wouldn't. Your personality is stored in the structure of the brain, not the electrical impulses. During deep hypothermic circulatory arrest, all brain activity ceases completely, for up to an hour, but when awoken, patients are still themselves.
Ken B
What I typed was pure speculations of a possible way to do it, assuming that it's pribably more feasible to map the brain internally through the circulatory system rather than using an advanced MRI or similar device, without damaging the brain.
If this is a lost venue then I stand corrected. But I believe we're not far of technologically to produce nano robots of such scale that could theoretically do it. Perhaps within 10-20 years.
I think the MRI method is much more feasible than nanorobots. Nanorobots will not appear any time in the near future, and when they do they'll be more biological than mechanical.
Our memory is story in the form of proteins.
So what?
Glenn Scott
I agree. Something is always lost in the conversion from analog to digital.
The article did say there is a router that enables each core to communicate with the nearest 256 cores. At some point we will need the technology for the cores to be able to create their own neural network and new neural pathways on demand as needed.
Jonathan Jones
uploading='copy'. how would it benefit a person to copy their nervous system into a computer? Not only will you die anyway, but if you don't die… what job could you have? Your employer could fire you at any time and just download a copy of you to do the work. i like this idea better… http://www.firsttemporalalliance.com/media.php
Marc Guillot
Indeed. We are talking theoretically, but I agree that uploading consciences to chips doesn't sounds so desirable. Personally I prefer if they investigate how to stop the aging process.
Why would you want to live for ever or for centuries?
Marc Guillot
The real question is who wouldn't want to live for centuries ?. :-)
Jack Betts
the aging process begins at birth, oxygen is our enemy, it is what makes us age. Theoretically nanotechnology being injected or even the upload of our brain to something like ghost in the shell would prolong the aging process generally, some type of death would still occur.
The copy is still you. You're saying that you would do work without pay?
Even more to the point are you willing to die happy just because a machine can mimic your brain? The machine may "think" it is you, but it won't be you. It definitely gets pretty creepy when you think about it.
Yes, it most definitely will be you, and no, it's not at all creepy.
Benny X
no fair, you've moved the goalposts! lol people were saying back in the 50's that they would have human-like machine intelligence within a decade.
there's even a saying for it.. something like whenever someone says it's 'X' years away, the reply is that it's *always* 'X' years away.. lol but damn, i forget the saying at the moment..
Fusion, as well as the Singularity, seem to follow the same timeline as AI. lol
You'd probably just upload a copy of your memory that researched the detailed knowledge of the technology, no writing necessary.
And I'd just need to download it to my brain, after scanning for malicious code, no reading necessary.
Swiftright Right
IDK, futurists have been saying 60 years since 1990 based on growth in computer systems. But this is a pretty big leap forward. Conceivable you could use these to build a data center that could mimic a human brain in the next couple of years,
Pretty good since just last year the 4th most power computer in the world took 45 minutes to model 1 second of 1% of a human brain. And that 1 second didn't actually model thought, it was like the digital version of seizure.
Then, better you upload your brain.
Jordan Bartholme
You can't write about it without this one specific website? Do you realize how insignificant one thing is in the scope of eternity?
I think it's a long way from brain simulation. The problem is – that our individual neurons are themselves complex cells that would take a supercomputer to simulate the workings of a single cell. Surely the brain must be using that internal complexity in some way?
Otherwise you'd need a – maybe million neuron brain to outsmart a single microbe – because microbes manage complex behaviour and searching for food and changing how they behave in response to environment and so on without any neurons at all.
Then – some, myself included – are persuaded by Roger Penrose's argument that no programmable computer can truly understand the notion of truth and falsity. Yes humans lie, but to lie, you have to understand what is true and what is false. Computers can be programmed to simulate lying – but – they don't know what is true and what is false – so they aren't really lying.
He argued that there must be something non computable going on – in other words – to understand truth – we can't just be acting on programmed rules – no matter how complex as in a traditional computer program. It is a technical argument and people dispute about whether his conclusions are right or not.
But whether or not you accept his argument – it seems a reasonable possibility that he could be right about it, even if not sure his reasoning is right (I think myself that his reasoning is on the right lines as well basically).
There is also room for unknown physics and non computability in the cells of our neurons (even in cells of microbes) in the intricate dance of chemistry that goes on there – if you look carefully at it. We really don't understand it at all well yet – and is plenty still to discover. He gives one way it could happen using quantum coherence in micro-tubules and collapse of wave function happening in a non computable way. But – could be other explanations – main thing is – that there is room here for alternatives. Our physics is definitely incomplete, e.g. Quantum Mechanics incompatible with General Relativity though both work quite well in isolation. Perhaps this is one place where we will find out new things in the future.
Interesting stuff for sure. But I don't expect artificial AI to come out of this myself.
Rather – improved faster image recognition. Better proof checking. Better and faster "expert systems" where computers in particular applications may be able to "out do" humans. That sort of thing.
Jeff Vahrenkamp
1 million does put it above things like cockroaches, almost to a mouse or rat. this could be sufficient for very efficient autonomous behavior like flying (think flies, bee's). Now if they can shrink the chip to the size of a bee CNS and make it run on flower nectar…
Marc Guillot
Yes, there is plenty of uses for those insect-like mini-droids. Search droids on earthquakes sites, Amazon fully automatized delivery drones, construction sites, …
Facebook would also love those artificial brains for face recognition on the upload photos, etc. …
They will also be very helpful on self-driving cars. So many possibilities …
Glenn Scott
PC speech drones, police drones, big brother drones, we're just trying to save the drones…
Glenn Scott
I believe they made a breakthrough in photosynthesis recently. That might enable the wings of the bot to produce electricity to run it.
Andreas Sjånes Berg
But then again, its on a flat surface, maby a cm or two thick. Stack 50 of theese on each other and we are a bit closer. :)
And this was done on 28nm tech. With 14nm you can get four times the amount of transistors on the same surface-size.
Now we would be at around 200 million. Around the same amount of a cat or dog.
And a brain have a lot of capacity wasted on processes that a machine / you doesn't need / want.
The amount of neurons is sort of irrelevant. It's just one chip. If you wanted to you could just mass produce hundreds of thousands of them (and hopefully get some economies of scale from that.) However NNs have diminishing returns on the number of neurons. The learning algorithm start to become more important.
Interestingly, these neurons are already many thousands of times faster than biological ones. The brain is really huge, but it's also really, really slow.
you have to connect the chips very fast with high bandwidth and low latencies so you can't just make 1000 of these chips and have 1 billion neurons working together.
i think you will haver to use TSV stacking and interposes to have enough connections to make it work.
Glenn Scott
"I would say this definitely gets us CLOSER to that. But 1 million
neurons is a long way off the billions of neurons in your brain."
Happy clown :)
"But, having said that, I'm fairly certain that we'll get brain-uploading before we die (assuming you're not 50+ right now)."
Sad clown :(
Benny X
i swear, there were people saying the same kinds of things back in the 70's. And we're no closer to the dream, sadly.
may i ask you a question how old are you? i assume you where 27 in the 70ties to remember those things. so you would be around 71 today.
also did you enjoy the atary ET game?
Benny X
lol i'm nowhere near 70, but i am middle-aged. I saw the original Star Wars trilogy in the theatres, and quite enjoyed the Atari 2600/VCS and such. I remember when personal computers began to catch on, too.
No, the reason I'm familiar with prior predictions/hopes regarding AI are because I've been interested in robotics/AI for as long as I remember, and have read countless books about its beginnings and its progression. It's also why I'm so cynical about it all, lol.
if i recall it right the AI idea of the 70ties was to program an hard AI. they where far to optimistic and thought it would be easy to do. turns out programming an ai is an NP problem and very hard to do.
the current method is the brute force method.
we know the brain works (at least our brain tells it) so lets reverse engineer it. abstract it and than simulate/emulate it but our computer power is far from doing an complete emulation and even further from an simulation.
Benny X
well.. the AI field 'officially' started in the 50's, but you can trace it back even to the 1930's or perhaps earlier (and you can do the same with the invention of the transistor, the discovery of the LED, and the invention of fiber optics. it gets interesting!).
just going by memory, it started with neural nets. then more of a brute force approach, then expert systems. then subsumption architectures. in the late 70's and in the 80's there were attempts to commercialize AI efforts, originating from MIT. LISP machines, Symbolics corporation, Thinking Machines, etc. Symbolics was one of the first commercial internet presence on the internet, in fact. Then you also had Japan in the early 80's with its 5th generation computing initiative with its big emphasis on AI)… the history goes on and on. Not with much success, either.
Nowadays the most effective AI 'wins' are from Google, etc. A lot of small-goals being met, instead of one all-encompassing thing we can point at and call 'AI'. Now it's machine learning, pattern recognition, etc. A lot of small things being tackled at once, instead of one company trying to to everything at once.
just to add.. the most interesting AI researcher I've read about is Rodney Brooks. I think he had some good ideas.
Swiftright Right
Nah back in the 70's people were just starting to realize that simulating a human mind was just in the realm of possibility. As I remember it, it was all "some day" and "it may be possible too"
If they can keep up the current rate of 3 orders of magnitude increase in neuron count every 3 years we should see a billion neurons by 2017.
Even if you could upload your brain to a chip, which may or may not be possible in the future, it still would not be you. It would be a separate being apart from you. You will die and your consciousness with it. What will live on is not you…it will be an emulation of you. Think of twins and clones…similar to same, but still different individuals.
Swiftright Right
There are theories that say it may be possible to slowly transfer a conscious over time. Most of them boil down to some sort of futuristic co processor that copies a tiny area of you mind and destroys it but keeps you brain connected to the new version.
Not necessary! Silly Ship of Theseus fanboys.
Even if you could upload your brain to a chip, which may or may not be possible in the future, it still would not be you.
Of course it would. Who else would it be?
Twins and clones are not the same people because the only thing they share is DNA. The uploaded you shares all of your personality and memories, so yes, it is actually you.
The new "you" would think the same as you, have your memories, would react to situations the same as you and as far as anyone else…it would be you. But, it is not you. It is another entity. Identical twins are very close and clones are probably even closer – but they are not the same. If your brain was perfectly uploaded to a chip and the two of you existed at the same time – which would you be? You are not both, for you only exist in one place. Even if the co-existence was only for a microsecond it would still be two, not one. One of you will die and with that death goes your existence. Even if the new entity completely believes he is you…you are gone. And, if you both continue to live at the same time, your different experiences would cause further separation.
If your brain was perfectly uploaded to a chip and the two of you existed at the same time – which would you be? You are not both, for you only exist in one place.
Yes, you would be running in both places
One of you will die and with that death goes your existence.
Not if you make regular backups
And, if you both continue to live at the same time, your different experiences over time would cause even further separation.
Your different experiences over time would cause you to separate into different people, yes, but you'd start out the same person. If one body dies immediately after copying, then you are still alive. If one body dies a week after copying, then you've lost one week of life experiences, but you're still alive.
Either way, it is an interesting concept – if ever completely possible. And, like life after death something that can't be truly proved or disproved.
Well the question of the existence of life after death is something that is either objectively true or false, though we can't prove or disprove it unless it's possible for afterlives to affect our world in some measurable way.
Philosophical questions like Ship of Theseus or Swampman have no objective truth value. They are purely subjective; just a matter of opinion. I think a copy done with high enough fidelity is the same person, but that's just an opinion and people who don't believe it will choose to die mortal deaths and oh well sucks to be them.
Luke Faez
It's not YOU. It's a separate thing. You don't feel what it feels or see what it sees (unless you're somehow exchanging information with a cable or something lol). You die, and it lives on. It's a state of your brain from a certain point in time. It still should be treated as a human being and even as you, but it isn't actually you.
Of course it's you.Who else would it be? Don't be ridiculous.
Senne Kuyl
I'm not who I was when I started replying!
This objection is quite limited in its perspective of human development. It fails to embrace the constant change we are undergoing while being 'me' whatever version of 'me' is.
José Luis Malo
I just turned 50. Does it mean I'm screwed?
Yep. Plasticizing your brain after you die might work?
José Luis Malo
Well, I realized that he didn't take into account the fact that medicine is advancing at an exponential rate, you know the bridge to a bridge to a bridge. Nobody can guarantee that they are gonna be alive tomorrow, but I think I got a good chance to make it to the brain uploading era.
Well I hope so, because I want it too, but I'm not optimistic. :/
Our brain sure… but many animals which can think are well below our level. One should expect that if it would ever work, that we should see something…
// not holding breath… waiting for excuses.
The deep philosophical question is: am I uploading my brain or merely copying it? If it is a copy, then I have merely created an identical twin, not actually preserved my current consciousness.
Pointless philosophical navel-gazing. The copy is you. Multiple copies can run simultaneously and they're all still you.
It's not pointless at all – it's a very important distinction. It's you only in the sense that it's a direct copy of you. You've now duplicated yourself. Your original self, the conscious one reading this now, still dies with your current body.
No, your body is not your self. Your old body dies, and your new body continues with your self intact. Losing an arm does not make you less of a person.
Everything that I am as a conscious entity is contained in the neural structure of my brain. This is a very real, physical thing. Sort of transplanting my brain into a new body or artificial system, the original consciousness will cease to exist when this organ dies. What's left is a direct copy of it. Still me, just not the origional me reading this now.
Yes, the neural structure of your brain. Which is copied into the computer, so still exists.
Your consciousness ceases to exist at least once every 24 hours, but you're still the same person. The you reading this now is the same you as yesterday before you fell asleep.
you're describing copy and paste, not cut. you still die
also we tend to forget we also have a body along with a brain
After uploading you can have as many bodies as you want.
No, you don't die.
You don't necessarily need perfect fidelity to upload a functioning personality. If you can just get me to the post 12 pack functioning stage with the promise of a higher fidelity personality later, I'm fine with that. I've been fine with that many, many times…
Speak for yourself man. Not everyone has "billions of neurons".
Problems is, our brains don't work with 1's and 0's.
you can simulate analogue networks on a digital computer.
you bind multiple bits together to float points. the discrete steps between the float points will be smaller than the noise of the circuit this means that the simulation will run 100% correct.
Benny X
you can't simulate quantum states on a digital computer. Well, I suppose you could, but it would be so slow as to be useless.
The verdict is still out on whether the brain employs quantum states in any part of its operation. If it does, then the creators of this computing architecture are woefully off the mark in saying it works like the brain. Of course they'll never let facts get in the way of money, but that's a whole other discussion.
if the brain is a quantum computer i will eat my own shoes.
quantum computers require extremely thigh calibrations and environment controls to work. it is highly unlikely that the brain uses it. the environment includes magnetism, temperature, radiation and observers.
it is a electrochemical computer so it communicates with one or more neurons with ions. some communication happen through the brain fluids and long lived global communication(emotions) with chemicals and hormones.
Benny X
well, i never suggested the brain is like a DWave machine, lol. Your idea of a quantum computer is one thing, and that's how man goes about implementing such a thing. The brain, as a biological organism, is perfectly capable of having its own means to employ quantum phenomenon, and it wouldn't look anything like what we would associate as a 'quantum computer'. The brain, as a whole, doesn't need to be completely quantum in nature. But it is argued by some, that at a certain level, it *may* be quantum in nature. It's a possibility, is all I'm saying.
than please give me an example of a usable quantum phenomena of the brain. I'm talking about properties like spin, state etc.
Benny X
i'm not going to drown you in the ton of literature out there regarding the subject matter. but a simple search for 'quantum nature of the brain' on Google should keep you busy for a while!
still bring me the heavy sources close the theory.
i have interests in physics (it was my plan B for university study choose) but I'd rather wait to learn it very deep until they found the link between the classical system and the quantum system.
Benny X
well, if you have an interest in physics, then you already know that the classical system isn't possible without the underlying quantum system that makes reality possible….
even that computer in front of you would not be possible without its quantum nature. which is not the same as saying it is a quantum computer. it merely makes use of quantum physics to perform its work.
and there is where the current model just fails. how can a particle be all over the place but the macro object just stays there?
same thing whit no hidden variables and observer idea.
i'm standing on very thin ice and i'm nearing too close that the Dunning-Kruger effect might kick in.
Benny X
well, now you're making me use my mind, which is bad because right now i have had a few drinks, lol so i apologize if what i say doesn't make much sense.
a particle isn't all over the place. it merely has a probability of being at one place or another at any given time. it can't be everywhere at once. but it certainly moves fast enough that from our macro perspective it's solid and holds up and with enough of them together, things appear solid and colorful. But at the quantum level, things are neither solid nor colorful.
I doubt i'm telling you anything that you don't already know, anyhow.
James Huckabone
Memories = our quantum link to the infinite. The mechanism to access the infinite decays and distorts their interpretation but the memories themselves …
Marc Guillot
Yes, but how do you know that this chip works with 1's and 0's ?.
Transistors and electronics can be analogue (like the communication chips on our phones).
Benny X
if anything, the brain is very much like an analog machine, in the sense that it doesn't really have discrete uniform states throughout, only firing thresholds. it is even prone to errors in accuracy, like an analog machine. but it is still faster (than any digital machine) at what it does best. just like an analog machine.
it also degrades gradually and can compensate for injuries. digital machines tend to be bad at that. put a bullet through one, and it will be useless. put a bullet through someone's head, and they might have to learn how to walk or talk again, but they'll do it. (that's just an example)
actually the point that it uses thresholds makes it an multi level computer which can be emulated with digital signals and isn't analogue in any way.
an example of a self recovering digital system is the internet or just a server supercomputer cluster. yes it would go slower but it wouldn't stop.
Benny X
actually, the original goal of the internet was to make it impossible to destroy.
the internet we have now did not quite follow that plan, thus it could indeed be destroyed. it's weaker than it was originally meant to be.
euuum if you cut all the wires or shut down the electricity yes otherwise the internet would just stay going. if a connection is broken than the packet just get switched around the fault.
it uses packet oriented connectionless protocol so it is fault tolerant.
Benny X
fault-tolerant, yes. but not immune from threats.
it really all comes down to the network itself, of which is owned and operated by a handful of companies. They form the backbone. It really would not take much for a determined group of individuals to disrupt and cripple the internet. It wouldn't even involve the use of EMP blasts.
that is a problem on a different level. the technology made it invulnerable but if humans mess whit it and shut it down than yea it fail.
a brain comparison: bacterial infections of the brain.
Benny X
i guess the question one could ask is this: assuming you know exactly how a brain works, what benefit would there be to mimicking it's biological operation with computer hardware? it works how it does because of its biological nature. remove that biological limitation, and you might find that its operation could be improved upon, instead being a better fit for a computing architecture and playing to its strengths.
if you can simulate it at a higher rate than it would be relatively more intelligent than us. this means it could solve problems a computer couldn't solve while doing it much faster than a human could.
THEORETICAL we could create , test and use virtual implants and improve the virtual brain if it didn't help we could just remove it without damage. This would be considered unethical if done in living humans.
or we could emulate some parts of the brain that do not require the precision. so instead of letting the virtual brain calculate sqrt(7)+5.2157 a small program gets ran and the result will returned into the virtual brain.
Benny X
i'm actually more interested in the 'transhumanist' outlook.. if one can call it that. take all the BS that goes on in this world, and it can be pinned on one thing: humanity's weak mind. most of it stems from our mortality. the rest stems from religion, the arguments for or against I won't get into here.
Emotionally and physically, humans are weak. If we were no longer preoccupied with our own mortality, perhaps we'd be willing to 'choose' to evolve into a different form of sorts. A different mentality, anyhow. Perhaps doing just a straight copy of our 'old' minds into a new brain would seem primitive by then.
i have to admit that we might be culturally behind our technology, i blame nationalism and the idea that we have to do work we don't like to buy stuff we don't need.
why cant we just be one and automate all the work of course a corrupt global super government would be very scary and create an 1984 ending of the world.
I could listen to you two go on for hours. I would also blame religion and our own mortality as the cause of our not being far more advanced than we already are. People are to preoccupied with there own lives and living in the now than looking to the future. On a similar note the religious look too in depth to what will happen after our deaths and preoccupy themselves with those thoughts.
The question i would have is even if we were to upload our brains to a chip what would happen to our consciousness how would we go about switching that over as well.
Would it not be better to create technology that would allow us to slowly change out parts of our organic brain to guard us from the failure that it will eventually bring?
yes we will need to "hotswap" our neurons. i think this can be done cluster by cluster. but it has to be done slowly so our brain adapts to the new parts.
its like moving a running VM when a server rack fails. without any real stops.
It doesn't matter. You can approximate analogue functions to any arbitrary degree of precision with digital operations. Of course we can and probably will use analogue circuits as well. But counterintuitively, they are usually less accurate. The universe is very noisy, especially at the nanoscale. But digital circuits are nearly perfect and each additional circuit doubles the degree of precision.
making a human like AI doesn't mean immortality it can be a side effect but it isn't inherited in the singularity. copying to your brain to a chip may destroy the original.
Matt Menezes
Anyone who can't get what you just said, just think about downloading your consciousness to a computer. If it doesn't kill you, than you've only forked your consciousness, and at the point of forking, the new consciousness will start to take its own path independent of you. This alone proves you won't be one in the same. Granted, it's better than nothing, but it's not a path to "immortality" of the mind…
thx i couldn't have said it better myself.
Even if you replicate your brain in a computer, you still have a separate consciousness. You won't think/feel anything the computer does.
What creates that consciousness? Is it the organic grey matter? Is it the energy, given life, by traversing that neural structure? To truly become immortal via digitizing yourself, you have to figure out how to preserve your consciousness.
my guess would be to replace neuron by neuron so your brain can adapt.
Well it depends how you define your identity. You aren't the same person 5 minutes in the future. Your atoms will have moved, some even replaced, and you'll have different experiences.
See Identity Isn't In Specific Atoms http://lesswrong.com/lw/pm/identity_isnt_in_specific_atoms/
lets put it in an other way if you copy yourself you will have 2 identical minds but the original one will still be the organic one. the organic one then you are dead. but you copy is still alive.
so you are not immortal. but if you could replace your brain neuron by neuron while awake than you are not copied.
this will result in a immortal brain because you can upgrade and replace without destroying the original.
to put it in an other way. a copy mean that you copy the exe and ram of a program and start the same program on an other computer. if the first computer gets destroyed than the original program is destroyed.
but if you moved the program while it was running to an other computer (or hot swap all the hardware) and the first computer was destroyed than the original program still exist.
You can also save the state of the computer to a hard drive and reload it on another computer. It is functionally exactly the same. Same thing for your brain.
yes and no we are not an instruction set based program whit a program counter so you cannot copy it. but you can copy the huge state from the brain but i think this creates a fork of the brain and not the original program.
A fork is still the same program.
the organic one then you are dead. but you copy is still alive.
And therefore you are still alive.
so you are not immortal.
Yes you are.
but if you could replace your brain neuron by neuron while awake than you are not copied.
No, that wouldn't be any different. It's just Ship of Theseus nonsense. Whether you make the copy one neuron at a time or all at once, it's still you on both sides.
yes but the other you is not the real you because you have no control of the other you. so in the end it is like a clone or a son to you but it isn't yourself.
Of course it would be the real you. Who else would it be?
Why would you need to control the other body when it's being controlled by a copy of you? It has the same goals and thoughts at you, so it will do what you want on its own.
No, it is not like a clone or a son at all. Neither of those has your memories or personality.
No, it's nothing like the movie Moon. Those are biological clones, not copies of consciousness.
actually they where the clones wake up and have preprogrammed memory they have the same thoughts and memory as the original one.
its not because it has the same consciousness that it will do exactly the same as you do. what if the other one also throws up coins to decide and put the same decisions on the same side. but the coin falls different than it will do a different action.
after some time it will have a different memory at the end of the day it wouldn't be you any more.
Yes but only the parts after the fork are different people. They still share the same identity before that point, which is what matters for immortality. If you only start up the copy after the original body has died, then there is no split of identity. But why does that matter? Eventually we'll figure out how to merge the forks back together anyway.
so you wouldn't mind if i made a copy of your and than shoot you (not the copy) through the head?
Not if it's a perfect copy.
Kind of rude, though.
Do you mind if I cut off your arm and then sew it back on again?
Makes me think of transporter technology. Unless you are physically transmitting the matter and physically putting it back together at the other end in exactly the same order, it isn't the same person.
yup that is the main problem if you got copied to an other planet than what do we have to do with the original?
Benny X
feed it to the pigs :) they'll eat anything!
Even if you do it's not the same person. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, the universe doesn't actually give identities to atoms. See the post I linked.
Benny X
i, for one, welcome my cheapest-bidder chinese-sourced machine consciousness!
the new consciousness will start to take its own path independent of
you. This alone proves you won't be one in the same.
Yes, the forks are the same person. If one copy dies 5 minutes after forking, it's equivalent to losing 5 minutes of your life. 5 minutes of amnesia. Amnesia is not death. Copying consciousness is a path to immortality.
Matt Menezes
However, the forked consciousness, if not delusional, understands it's not you/the original person. Rather, it's a manifestation of your brain at a point in time. You are the squishy, organic gray matter that died a few minutes after forking. There's a difference.
When I die, MY stream of consciousness will end forever (I'm an atheist, a theist might think they live on forever, but that another discussion entirely). If I was able to download my brain to a computer right before dying, it's not like I'd magically wake up and be like, "I'm alive again!!" My fork might very well think that when it's initiated, but not me because I'm dead.
Again, I'm not saying I wouldn't do it. I'd be more than happy to download my brain so my digital copy can live on forever. However, I'm under no illusion that it's ME…
if not delusional, understands it's not you/the original person.
They're both you! There is nothing that makes you you that isn't in the copy. Meat doesn't make you you.
When I die, MY stream of consciousness will end forever
No, it will stop in your body and restart in the new body. Your "stream of consciousness" ends at least once per day, but you wake up the next day and are still the same person. If you are put into deep hypothermic circulatory arrest, your entire brain shuts down and all activity ceases, but when you wake up again you are still the same person. The meat you live in doesn't make you you, your memories and thoughts and personality do. All of those things will be in the copy too.
Matt Menezes
When going to sleep, the brain is very active, and sleep is responsible for moving memories from short to long term (there was a great article in SciAm maybe a year ago on sleep and the brain). With respect to the circulatory arrest, I'm not sure if your brain cells and neurons completely stop everything, but it's probably close enough.
That being said, I get what you are saying, especially with respect to consciousness. You don't know what happened. It's just like, boom, you are awake after surgery and none the wiser as to what happened during the process. However, how do you reconcile running both the original brain and the copied brain at the same time? Will I, in my body, be experiencing the same thoughts as the copied one? Surely not – they must be independent and run independently at the point of copying. The copy is probably like, "WOW! I was just asleep in the OR and now I'm awake, but in a computer!" My organic brain is thinking, "this is business as usual. I went to sleep in the OR, and now I'm awake again."
So, if this copy is having independent thoughts from my own brain, how is that the same? It's damn close – the copy has all my memories, morals, even a simulated CNS with senses – but it's doing it's own thinking. The two consciousness are mutually exclusive, even though they are derived from the same source. Kill off one, and the other will go on none the wiser. How's that exactly the same?
I'm not sure if your brain cells and neurons completely stop everything
They do. "The procedure requires keeping the patient in a state of hibernation at 12–18 °C with no breathing, heartbeat, or brain activity for up to one hour. Blood is drained from the body to eliminate blood pressure. The patient is considered clinically dead during the operation." But your self does not die. Your self is contained in the structure of the brain, which survives and is revived into consciousness despite the body being clinically dead.
However, how do you reconcile running both the original brain and the copied brain at the same time?
Who cares? I'd run dozens of copies of myself at the same time if I could.
Will I, in my body, be experiencing the same thoughts as the copied one?
Surely not – they must be independent and run independently at the point of copying
Yes. (though someday we will probably also figure out how to merge multiple copies' experiences back into a single stream of consciousness)
So, if this copy is having independent thoughts from my own brain, how is that the same?
Because it has everything that makes you you. If one body dies, it's not that big of a deal because you are still alive in the other body. So what if you lose consciousness in one body and gain it in the other? You can pick up where you left off and nothing is lost.
Can you pinpoint what exactly is lost when one body dies and the consciousness continues in another body?
Matt Menezes
I guess it boils down to expectations and what you consider/define as "you." I really, really hope that I can live forever, but I'm pretty doubtful until something tangible is achieved and people wake up in a computer being like, "I'm alive!!". ;-)
I get what you are saying about being clinically dead. However, the cells in your body do not completely stop doing everything. Otherwise, why not just suspend a patient indefinitely? Cooling the body down and using saline in place of blood has an effective limit before the brain tissue starts to have issues. Anyway, I'm with you that in this case, your consciousness does stop for a few minutes, and you are none the wiser when you wake up. Come to think of it, there's probably also a limit on how long someone can be out before their psyche takes a hit from missing out on too much. I'd like to think I could wake up in the future and love every minute of it, but maybe a lot of people would get jacked up because the world is nothing like they're used to and they'd get depressed.
Yeah I'd like to live forever, but I highly doubt it will happen. Futurists are always far too optimistic with their timelines. But the more we convince people it's a good thing, the more quickly it will be developed.
Matt Menezes
Haha, yeah. But this is one of those perpetually 10 years off technologies that, quite literally, have life and death implications!!
Dr. NEGA
i think your on to something, it possible that brain transfer conscious to another human body is similar to a machine with your memories from birth to current can have the knowledge what have it learned from birth but not knowing if it is human or not…but can it be proven that its me or some one else with different personality and its like dealing 1 out of million possibility this turn out wrong tune of me…we have different moods and thoughts changes in our brains that changes everyday..This need more testing on DOGS if it works than this will open the doors to immortality but with problems because we are going to be made out of parts must maintain functional all the time…since we all are ghosts in one chip and that chip don't last forever..
copying your brain to a chip may destroy the original.
Someone's been reading Battle Angel Alita too.
I wish. Don't get your hopes up, though. Make the best you can out of this life because we probably won't figure out immortality for another 100 years or so.
Marc Guillot
1 million artificial neurones is not bad, I'm pretty sure there is plenty of uses for them (shapes recognition, …). But we still have a lot of work to do to equalize the 100 billion neurones of a human brain. Looks like we are still far from AI consciences.
i think some parts could be made more abstract and smaller. so some neural networks of the human brain could be replaced by a look up table.
this is a massive parallel chip so i suspect that the yield are rather good because who cares if 1 core gets fused off. if we have a 21% growth per year than we advance a magnitude every 10 years. in 30 years we will have our first 1 Gneural chip.
Marc Guillot
Yes indeed, yield errors have no much importance on those chips.
There is plenty of use for them as they are, but for the Skynet that we all are waiting for, we will probably have to wait those 30 years to that 1G neural chip.
and than stack 100 of them and be done with it. these neurons could be made faster than our neurons. assume they are 2.5x faster. now we can do some kind of interleaved simulation. so simulate=>save=>reconfigure=>simulate and only need 1/2 of the neurons.
Considering that our brain is made up of many different parts (vision, hearing, motor etc) Why do you think we really need to have a system that even needs 1/2 a brain (50 billion neurons). Think of it like this: Are people who are blind/deaf suddenly not intelligent/conscious?
I think the number of neirons required to give rise to an AGI is far less than many are thinking.
yea i was still using the brute force idea. but it is logical that some parts of the brain could be simulated by special coprocessors like DSP's.
you could also skip a lot of the body functions like heart,sweat, lungs etc. But we do not know which part makes us conscious and self-conscious.
but like kurzweil said a magnitude difference only makes 10 years difference whit a growth rate of 21%.
Benny X
well, Kurzweil is also a kook. Wouldn't take much of what he says as gospel. He should have just stuck with making music synthesizers.
i do not fully believe his stuff about immortality and infinitive resources and that kind of promises of the singularity e.g. the possible side effect of the singularity.
but he is more right than wrong with his idea of law of accelerating returns and the growth in S shaped curves where an old technology gets superseded by a newer one just as most of the stuff is exponentially growing not linearly.
we can already emulate neural networks they are not exactly the same (they work differently) but they perform the same functions.
also most encodings work with the imperfections of our brains so we know the visual and audio system of the brain. but only in an abstract form.
also even he admits that his date of 2056 might be to optimistic.
but if he predicted by 1 magnitude it would only take 10 more years with a annual growth of 21%. or 16.5 years whit an annual growth of 15%.
Benny X
well you bring up a good problem when you says 'parts of the brain could be simulated', in that we don't actually know *what* parts we should simulate, or even if we can. We don't even have a clue as to where consciousness lies, or even what it is yet. We're still like barbarians dragging around our mates by the hair, at this state of the game.
Yeah, it would be weird to exist as only a simulated brain, with no endocrine system to make us nervous or angry or happy. Spocks in a jar.
Marc Guillot
Indeed, and if I don't remember wrong my biology classes, I think that we only use around 15% of the neurones on our brains.
If your biology class taught you that, you should find another school. That's a new age BS urban myth used to sell self-help books, not a scientific fact.
A million neurons is eight hundred thousand more than what Sarah Palin has.
So clever.
She isn't very clever with two hundred thousand neurons :)
another step towards the end of humanity
Marc Guillot
Don't worry, John Connor will end this madness. ;-)
It's Battlestar Galactica all over again!!! We never learn!!
As long as it's humans becoming post-humans, I'm fine with it. It's the "humans killed off and replaced by post-humans" that's worrying.
Hey, on that graph, where is the AMD Bulldozer core?
below the pentium 4 in power but lefter than ive bridge in frequency. its a logarithmic graph so there isn't much difference. a 3d graph would have been better. power density at frequency at performance.
Carlden Luna
IBM could have AT LEAST put in the proper vocabulary to the parts of their "brain-like" computer
Inputs = Dendrites
Outputs = Axons
Enclosed Core = Neuron
Come on guys, if you're gonna mimic the brain, at least mimic anatomy terms. :(
Benny X
there are so many problems with this article, i don't even know where to begin. First off, you can name the components in this Truenorth chip 'axons, neurons, and synapses' all you like, but please don't mistake them for a real brain's components. To actually build a brain-like machine, we have to actually know how the brain does what it does. We're nowhere close to that, and we won't be close to it for decades yet. Scientists have been chasing this problem since before any of us reading this site were born. It's great that this tech shows vastly improved power efficiency, but the real test will be in real-world applications. Are there any yet? This article says nothing about what kinds of practical things this architecture can do – if anything – yet.
here is another problem: it is still a programmed architecture. the article says 'the main purpose of the SyNAPSE project is to take existing systems that simulate the functionality of the brain in software — such as deep neural networks — and run them on hardware that was specifically designed for the task. As you may already know, dedicated hardware tends to orders of magnitude more efficient than simulating/emulating the hardware in software on a general-purpose CPU.'
ok so which is it? is it dedicated hardware, more along the lines of, say, a GPU? or a DSP? as long as it is still programmed, it is still going to be power-inefficient compared to truly dedicated (as in, say, a codec) hardware. In one breath you're saying this thing works like a brain, but then you seem to be saying this thing is still programmed, like a computer (albeit one with a specialized (non Von-Neumann) architecture).
you're also (admittingly) comparing apples to oranges here when you say " IBM is touting some utterly incredible efficiency figures for TrueNorth. While it's not directly comparable, the world's most efficient supercomputer only manages around 4.5 billion FLOPS per watt.". This just muddles things further. Why even include metrics for a supercomputer's performance when this new architecture won't even be doing the same kinds of workloads, assuming this thing truly works like a brain? (hint: it doesn't)
I love reading about new computing architectures, but this particular article seems high on hype, short on details, and lacking in facts. It reads a lot like a fluff piece.
what if it can positionally self modify like an fpga can? or you could use it with genetic algorithms and train them for a specific purpose.
Benny X
fpga's are neither cost-effective, power efficient, nor anything like the brain (so basically, a very suboptimal approach). Genetic algorithms are software, running on hardware. Again, non-optimal/inefficient, and very slow compared to a solution implemented entirely in hardware.
but these neurons can reconfigure like an fpga, can't they?
or at least they look similar a lot of small cores lut+ ff +some logic glued together with switching interfaces. but now with neural network simulation cores glued together.
Joel Hruska
I feel like you're demanding a great deal of neurological expertise and judging a bit unfairly.
The core is designed to be a better simulation of how neurons *work* than anything we have currently. Yes, it's a programmed architecture because the *brain* is a programmed architecture. You run on electrical impulses that form the equivalent of machine code.
One assumes that this chip will excel — was designed to excel — at the same kinds of problems currently put to neural networks and in research institutions. If you want to look at what those are, go read up on neural networks — it's a staggeringly complex topic with a great deal of ongoing research.
"Why even include metrics for a supercomputer's performance when this new architecture won't even be doing the same kinds of workloads,"
Because people measure things in relation to other things and establishing common ground is a necessity for meaningful discussion.
" assuming this thing truly works like a brain? (hint: it doesn't)"
I don't see anyone claiming that this chip = brain in a can. It's designed to better resemble the neural structure of the human brain. It's considered a significant achievement by how such achievements are measured.
The chip evolved from sluge. It wasn't created.
Benny X
it climbed out of the mud, like a zombie, screaming for the brains it wished it had!
This is amazing. Now, what the most efficient "gpu" wich can create the most real games in the world? Yes, the human brain, who had lucid dream knows I mean, then I hope that this neuromorphic processor can be used for this.
Joel Hruska
Um. No. Not really.
A million neurons on a chip is a huge deal and this chip is amazing — but we're orders of magnitude away from human neural density.
A million neurons in a chip. I wish the the members of the US Congress had a million neurons combined! Sometimes I ask a little too much.
So even at 1/100000 the power of a human brain this tech should demonstrate some limited AI IF it is capable of doing so…. // not holding breath.
George Raina
Ken Barber
Even running at a slow speed, this processor would be smarter then Reid and Pelosi combined.
Did you come up with that all by yourself? You must be proud.
Ken Barber
Yes, and yes I am proud too !
Congratulations on being a mindless partisan marionette that turns intellectual scientific discussions into vapid political bickering.
Ken Barber
My job is to make libs like you agitated. I got you to reply TWICE, so I'm successful.
What's a "lib"? I don't follow professional wrestling.
Ken Barber
Got-ya for the 3rd time. I'm giving myself a gold star.
So the Democrats pay you to post these comments?
Ken Barber
4th reply = 2 gold stars.
America (or Israel) will eventually plant a matrix of such chips in human brain (the holiest of holies) . These chips will act like inbuilt computer for future human activities(money transactions etc. 666 ) w/o which a person will be considered as backward (just like ppl now who dont use internet) . This system will also take commands from government making humans as its slaves. And the prophesy in the Bible(NT) will be fulfilled (the abomination standing in place of holiest of holies).
This will be done by Antichrist (or anti-moral ruler)
BTW the pothead gaylord OhBama may do it in his time too as a homo~sexual who is waging war against all the straight world and converting all on his side to homo~sexuality.
Choose your side now.
Darkness of homosexuality but advanced technology (USA+West+Aus) + money + chip in your brain.
A simple straight person in a simple straight world.
Choose what side?
Your backwater political sides are not the world.
How about you choose my side or else you lose to whatever political group I come up and find dangerous that you probably never even heard of or care about, but that I insist will otherwise take over the world?
I'm not siding with you. Your problems are not my problems. You don't live where I live. Your politics are not my politics. And to think it does is to consider me as a second/third-class human being and I certainly am not going side with that.
Good day to you Sir.
Saif Raza Khan
i couldn't find the right place to ask this question but here it is,i know researches are being conducted on "brain uploading" and that it will be possible but i am in doubt if they can transfer my "consciousness" if you know what i mean,when i will upload my brain and die i will DIE when my brain will be transferred into another "being" it'll think like me act like me but it'll not be "me"! .i hope you understand and answer me.
yep i though about it too but i think if you can be first synced with the "shell" (no pun intended) before pulling the plug on your meatbody i think you wont feel like you are someone else in the new body…
but if something will go wrong and your meatbody will come back to life then yes you will be 2 different persons imo…
ethics ethics and one more ethics… we'll see down the road ^^ maybe itll be illegal anyway and we will go deusEx on everyone instead
omg what if luddites legally banned mind uploading based on stupid philosophy and people had to do it in secret? that would make a good sci-fi.
Well technically that would be suicide so i can imagine why people can go against it, but im one of those who thinks that people can do whatever they want with their body if that doesnt endanger the other…
lets install suicide booth on every street corner futurama style i say ^^
Well hopefully it would be more like making a backup than suicide. We'll probably figure out how to scan the brain non-destructively.
But yeah, if you had to destroy the original to make the copy, some people would consider it suicide and try to ban it, and then everyone would be condemned to a mortal death unless they hide their activities from their totalitarian society. it would make a good story.
wow i wasnt talking about backups… for me backups is like totally different person.
If you werent in sync even for a millisecond while "transfering" into your new body, i consider it as 2 different people.
I think everything is about the timeline and space transfer ^^
I see it this way:
– Dude dies but gets reanimated == no spacial transfer; so same person.
-Dude dies and some robot gets activated later on as a backup == not the same person.
-SO logically if the Dude dies while being synced to another body, he is legally considered as being in two different spaces at the same time therefore the new body == same person.
So when i say "suicide" is when that same person is choosing to ether keep the meat body or the metal one.
but yeah that would be a sick movie, reminds me a lot about Ghost in the Shell ^^
Sam al
so you don't really die. To die is to lose your consciousness. If it is uploaded in a new shell…then you continue your existence in a new body. For you and your brain…you are still alive.
They're both you. What's important is that your memories and personality survive, not the pink goop in your head.
The pink goop is the personality etc, it's a chemical harddrive.
The pink goop is the hard drive, yes. But no, the personality, etc is the datastored on that drive, not the drive itself. You can move it to another drive and it's still the same data.
hey i remeber the SyNAPSE project, i was so hyped by that!
3 years later it seems so primitive… lets hope the next 3 years will bring us something even better
Indeed i would like to have a PCI port used by one of those badboys to unload some work from the CPU… ^^
I have a moral question concerning this. Doesn't adding neurons, even artificial ones, to a chip mean that the chip is somehow conscious and thus should be regarded as such?
And if we use them in computers, that we have a reverse Matrix on our hands (instead of humans living in a virtual world controlled by humans, it's computer chips controlled by humans)?
Hope finally for the millions of Americans who were born without intelligence.
Ivor O'Connor
First thing that comes to my mind since all these biological brain analogies are being used is how does it stack up to a human brain?
"The chip, called TrueNorth, consists of 1 million programmable neurons and 256 million programmable synapses "
Neurons (rough overestimate for adults): 10^11, or 100 billion
Synapses (based on 1000 per neuron estimate): 10^14, or 100 trillion
So the ratio of synapses to neurons is only 1/4 that of a humans. And then you would need about 100 million of these chips to equal that of a human's neuron count…
So where is this chip on that graph?
Ted Swortwood
When can I buy one to mine for bitcoins?
People still mining?
I checked some bookmarks I had for various Mining rig builders… nothing but "404 page not found" errors.
Although this looks like a nice advance toward a brain-on-chip don't forget the chemical components to human "thinking". Perhaps given a few more revs and some integration we might approach the "effective" number of neurons and synapses used in human intelligence which may be 1000 times less that the total neuron count in the human brain – think about the small % of DNA we actually use – or what part of the brain just goes to operate the body. We could finally see a kind of casual common sense in a mobile device (robot?) that could see (in many wavelengths) and hear very, very well. Goodby most human work. The final problem in becoming "human-like" is that without chemical emulation how do you give these things real feelings? Also, how do you start and maintain something that exists as a multi-dimensional electric wave? Maybe Elon Musk is right to worried about smart-enough autonomous robots without feelings, morals, fear of breaking the law … maybe Mars will be a no-autonomous-robot zone :)
True applications of American inventions are powered by Japanese and Korean enterprising minds.
http://thescienceentrepreneur.com/ joel
Exciting and scary…A piece on how our best scientific theories predict that TrueNorth or multiple chips could indeed become conscious! http://thescienceentrepreneur.com/2014/08/08/how-scared-should-we-be-about-ibms-new-truenorth-chip-is-it-self-aware-and-conscious/
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Big Blue must rush this to Walter Reed's Proctology and Urology teams, so they can prepare it for insertion into the President. There is a reason Big Blue is known as I-B-M!
I need 2 of these on my phone for voice processing and vision recognition. Security sensing for ANTI-NSA way of life.
Edward Sky
It is silly. A human brain is very different from silicon chip design. The human brain is effected at a quantum level, machines not so much. I often wonder why people are so excited to computer into human beings.
Dr. NEGA
this will unlock my higher brain functions that is damage by dead neurons connections and cured my learning disability altogether that limit my grammar,advanced math, critical thinking, and problem solving one day this help me to achieved my goals and do hope this will make my life easier than suffering everything from my job duties and everyday people interactions by a simpler conversations than they waiting and misunderstood my speech patterns that i have trouble ever since birth.
gcbaileyiii .
excellent advances, however … "No being can Create another being greater than or equal to
himself." so the focus should be useful "narrow AI" applications, not the singularity pipe dream.
Areyoua Nutsowhat
Let me be the party pooper…
First of all, we have no idea how true human intelligence arises. We could have 4000 billion neurons on this chip and yet no strong AI would emerge or anything resembling human intellect.
The problem was never speed or enough memory. Speed was never the issue, because we simply could run the human brain simulation at non-realtime. Let's say, compute 1 second of human thought based on X input within 1 year of time, and then play it back.
Memory we already have ample of…
And now to those thinking they could upload themselves to a chip, because they believe all they are is some complex structure, which if they copy onto a chip, would constitute what they are.
A silly idea… Just imagine copying yourself/your structure on such a chip without dying. Copy it even on 100 chips.
So what you have now is 100 copies of what you think is you, including yourself?
So who is you now? Do you think you will feel pain when someone "burns" one of the 100 copies of what YOU think is you?
Do you think any of the 100 copies of what you think is you will feel any pain when someone kicks you in the butt or punches you in the face?
I like science, but it seems that people have been brainwashed into thinking they are just some machine like a coffee machine, just more complex. Some kind of meat robot.
Sorry to burst your bubbles.
http://www.edscuola.it/lre.html Paolo Manzelli
The Synapses strength are vibrating and their
dynamic modulation it is excited through a newwork of complex
postsynaptic nano-dimensioned filaments composed that extend ∼100 nm
into the cytoplasm from the postsynaptic membrane. see
In the
Nano-dimension of this structural a cluster state is a type of highly
entangled state of synapses and we can hypothize that the Quantum
Entanglement my generate a coherent resonance effect extending the
simultaneity of excitation in a vaste area of neurons generating an
holistic quantum communication .
So that the nano-dimensioned
quantum entanglement through a coherent resonance will be , trasformed
into a macroscopic entanglement to interpret the binding and/or
holistic functions of quantum brain communication . see:
I think that the
above hypothese can be a section of the resarch of Quantum Creativity
Project .https://www.facebook.com/groups/1557903417770268/?fref=ts
http://neo-mahakala-108.deviantart.com/ Andrzej Wysocki
nice. when this chip will be cheap (i do not know price), i think my tech (Stitie Space) will significiantly advance in speed. (it's far from complete). http://dragonfly-algorithm.blogspot.com/2012/11/stitie-machine-11-beta.html


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Natracare, Ultra Pads, Organic Cotton Cover, Regular, Normal, 14 Pads
Items 1-5 of 110 total
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Need a few adjustments
4 people found the following review helpful
Posted by australia on Apr 22, 2013
I wish these were a little bit longer. I find they also bunch up quite a bit during the day and the adhesive on the back isn't very sticky. Don't think I'll purchase these again, but this brand's tampons are great, so I'll continue buying those.
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Wish they would stick!!
3 people found the following review helpful
Posted by Reviewer2847189 on Sep 27, 2012
These are great due to the Organic Cotton and no chemicals .... I just wish they would stick ..... the adhesive strip is too weak!!!
Not great
Posted by MyDewHerb on Apr 13, 2013
They are pretty stiff and the adhesive strip is pretty weak. They are however made of cotton and will not cause irritation so that's good. Other than that I don't think I will repurchase.
I'm disappointed...
Posted by opheart on Jul 07, 2012
They are: inflexible, tough, getting rumple, very inconvinient. The wings are small, the adhesive strip is very weak. Tough tne material is good. Would never buy again. It seems, they are maid by someone who hates women.
Natracare, Natural Ultra Pads, Regular, 14 Pads
2 people found the following review helpful
Posted by Linea-Organica on Apr 22, 2013
I like the quality of these pads. They are comfortable and cotton-made. Do not have this "sticky" feeling and more as with regular pads. But for the night maybe it takes to choose longer size pads just to prevent leaking.
Отличные по качеству натуральные коттоновые прокладки. Нет ощущения прилипания к телу как с обычными. Но на ночь лучше взять чуть длиннее (чтобы не было протекания) - видела у них такие тоже.

subset: commoncrawl


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Posted at: 06/21/2013 6:41 PM
Updated at: 06/21/2013 6:51 PM
By: Jenna Lohse
(ABC 6 News) --A massive fire in Northwood Iowa Thursday, destroyed the home of an Amish family who didn't have a telephone. It was a passerby who saw the flames and called for help.
Nobody was hurt in the fire, but the house is destroyed. Forty minutes went by before the fire department was even called. The house was fully engulfed by the time crews arrived.
Rubble is all that's left of the home now and fire crews are calling it a total loss. Investigators say the time it took the owners of the home to call for help made it virtually impossible to save it.
"He was about a mile North un-hooking some of his implement in the field and he was obviously with his horse and he come riding back and saw his house was on fire," said Mitch Hanson, Assistance Chief of Northwood Fire Department.
With no phone to call fire crews, the owners of the home, scrambled to save what they could.
"They tried to get some of the stuff out of the house prior to calling or getting help. They just figured get some of the valuable things out of the home and that's when they realized it was fully engulfed," said Hanson.
By that time, someone from town saw the smoke and called fire crews to the scene. It took them around 3 hours to contain. They say the family was heating up a tub of water with a wood burning fire in the basement, which caused the fire.
Fire officials say this isn't the first time a structure in this Amish community has been turned to ash.
"They're always in danger out there, I mean it's a bigger risk but that's the way their community is," said Hanson.
Northwood Fire Officials say the family that lived in the house has another place to stay on their land while they rebuild. The Amish community really comes together and supports one another, so they expect to start building within a week.


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The Billboard Q & A: Lawrence Lessig
Professor Lawrence Lessig is interviewed for Billboard magazine about his thoughts on the state of what he calls "the copyright wars" and legislative solutions:
Lawrence Lessig Stanford Law School Professor As he prepares to take a new position at Harvard, the legal scholar explains why he thinks the music industry should embrace copyright reform.
Billboard: What are some of the bigger misconceptions that people have about your ideas for copyright reform?
Lessig: The first big mistake is that people confuse my work with the growing copyright abolitionist movement that is out there. I'm fundamentally not a copyright abolitionist. I believe copyright is an essential part of the creative industry and culture is richer both in the money sense and in the diversity sense with copyright than without it. My objective is to find ways to update copyright and make it make sense in a different technological context, and that should be an objective shared by people who are in the industry.
The second thing is the industry is focused on the problem of an enormous number of people illegally accessing copyrighted material not paying for it. That's a significant problem, but there are other problems in copyright that we need to think about systemically to figure out how best to update it for the 21st century. Copyright law purports to regulate an enormous range of activities that there's no good reason to regulate.


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Author to Discuss 'Amish Grace' at Susquehanna
Published on October 4, 2011
Donald Kraybill, co-author of "Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy," will present a lecture Oct. 13 at 7 p.m. at Susquehanna University's Weber Chapel Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.
Kraybill, a professor of sociology and religious studies at Elizabethtown College, is recognized internationally for his scholarship on Anabaptist groups. "Amish Grace" explores the demonstration of grace and forgiveness in the Amish community after the 2006 Nickel Mines school killings in Lancaster County. He will relate his experiences writing about the tragedy and discuss the Lifetime Movie Network production "Amish Grace," a fictionalized account of the event.
Kraybill's research on Anabaptist groups has been featured in journals, magazines and newspapers, and on radio and television programs across the United States and in many foreign countries. He has served as a consultant for a number of projects related to Amish and other Anabaptist groups. The National Endowment for the Humanities and numerous private foundations have supported his research projects. Kraybill is the series editor of Young Center Books in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies published by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
Kraybill received his Ph.D. in sociology from Temple University. He served as chair of the sociology and social work department at Elizabethtown College and directed the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. He has also served as provost of Messiah College.
Kraybill's lecture is part of "Living Simple, Living Plain," a series of events organized by The Read Across the Valley Committee, a cooperative of 14 Susquehanna Valley libraries. Kraybill's is the final lecture in the series.
Karen M. Jones


text:
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Parent surveys have reported that one of the most important results of a college education is the ability to find a job and career, especially in precarious economic times, and Moravian comes through.
We have a long history of educating and developing leaders in a wide variety of fields, including healthcare, finance, education, and the sciences.
Of those who earn a Moravian bachelor's degree, 97% do so in four years, significantly higher than the national average, giving them an advantage in their continuing education and/or in pursuing their careers.
Page 4 of 7


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|Homewood Suites By Hilton Lorton hotels are listed below. Search for cheap and discount Homewood Suites By Hilton hotel prices in Lorton, VA for your family, individual or group travels. We list the best Homewood Suites By Hilton Lorton hotels/properties so you can review the Lorton Homewood Suites By Hilton hotel list below to find the perfect place.
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So, I stumbled upon this spammed post for a PRS fake awhile back on the facebook page.
Apart from the fact that it looks so ridiculously gaudy, and that I question whether the maker was even trying to make it look legitimate, this quote below made me laugh (and facepalm)
Ak Mojarrad: That's not a counterfeit, that is a legitimate product made under licence. I'm not saying Chinese gear is good, quite the contrary, I'm a Chinese gear hater myself, but it's not their fault that American and British companies move production to their country due to cheap labor and components.
First off, *license.
Secondly, I don't mind look-alikes in general (heck, I'd take an LP build from RAN in Poland over a Gibson in a heartbeat!), but I do mind when you try to brand them as guitars from the actual company, or even licensed models, when they're not, much less trying to sell or promote them. Plus, it's not the first time this particular site has been called out on counterfeit guitars.
Sorry for incoherently venting with reckless abandon near 4 in the morning. I just find that this stuff can be bollocks, at times. I suppose I should sleep now...
On a lighter note, while this is not a PRS, apparently this is a bass. And a Marcus Miller sig while we're at it! Seems legit. :P


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WVU Shocked by Sooners
DALLAS, Texas – Despite a 19-point halftime lead, the West Virginia women's basketball team came out of the break cold, as Oklahoma took a 65-64 victory, handing WVU an early exit at the Philips 66 Big 12 Championship Saturday night.
The Mountaineers (17-13, 9-9 Big 12) led by as many as 22 points, but a 40-point second-half performance by the Sooners (22-9, 11-7 Big 12) propelled Oklahoma to the last second victory.
An offensive foul with 26 seconds sacrificed the Mountaineers chance to pull away from a 64-64 tie. Sharane Campbell was fouled going up for a layup with 5.5 seconds remaining. Campbell converted the back end of the free throw attempts for a one-point game. Point guard Linda Stepney hustled the ball up the court and found Bria Holmes for a 3-point attempt, but the final-second shot was off the mark.
"We tried to take some time off the clock there when it was tied and run a play that we ran against Iowa State, and they called an offensive foul on Averee Fields to give them their last shot. Then we came down and had a good look to win the game and missed it, but we blew a 21-point lead," coach Mike Carey says.
A layup from Morgan Hook with 14:31 remaining in the game put the Sooners on a 26-5 run to take back the lead of the game since the opening minutes at 60-58 and 5:09 remaining in the game. WVU was cold from the floor, shooting 2-of-11 (18.2 %) and committing seven fouls and four turnovers in the stretch. The Mountaineers tied the game three more times, but couldn't take the lead back.
"Needless to say it was a tale of two halves. First half, we were scoring at will and they couldn't score and second half it was the other way around," Carey says. "Give Oklahoma credit. They came out and played harder than we did the second half. We weren't as aggressive offensively or defensively the second half, as we were the first half.
The Sooners took an early 10-3 lead with 16:30 in the opening half. A trey from Taylor Palmer sparked a 26-9 Mountaineer run to the 4:32 mark to give WVU a 10-point lead at 29-19. The Mountaineers continued their dominance by going on a 15-6 run to close out the half for a 44-25 halftime lead – its largest first half point total this season. The Mountaineers made it rain threes, recording eight in the first half alone, a season-high for the team.
Christal Caldwell was one of two Mountaineers in double figures, finishing the game with a double-double of 22 points and 11 rebounds – her first of the season. Caldwell hit all five of her 3-pointers in the first half. Palmer was the other WVU player in double figure with 11 points, while Crystal Leary came off the bench to chip in eight points and six boards.
After shooting 44.1 percent (15-34) in the first half, WVU was held to 7-of-32 (21.9%) in the second half, finishing the game shooting 33.3 percent (22-66) from the field. Oklahoma was 20-of-53 from the field, but the Mountaineers held the advantage from beyond the arc shooting 10-of-24 (41.7%), while limiting the Sooners to 3-of-24 (12.5%).
Oklahoma took 33 shots from the charity stripe and edged out WVU with a 66.7 (22-33) free throw percentage, while the Mountaineers converted 10-of-16 (62.5%) from the line.
The Mountaineers held Oklahoma to only 10 points in the paint in the first half, but the Sooners ended the game with a 30-22 advantage. Oklahoma converted 17 WVU turnovers into 20 points, while the Mountaineers had 17 points off 14 OU giveaways. WVU's bench outscored Oklahoma's 15-10, as the Mountaineers also had the advantage over the Sooners in second chance points 15-7.
Griffin, Ellenberg and Campbell finished in double figures for the Sooners with 16, 12 and 15 points, respectively, as the trio combined for 31 of the Sooners 40-second half points. Joanna McFarland led off the boards with 13, while Hook chipped in nine assists.
The Mountaineers are 17-13 overall and await their postseason fate with the NCAA Selection Show on Monday, March 18 at 7 p.m., on ESPN.
Big 12 Media Days: Dave Wannstedt
Big 12 Media Days: Karl Joseph
Men's Basketball: Bahamas Preview
Womens Soccer: Kadeisha Buchanan Press Conference
Big 12 Media Days: Dana Holgorsen
Women's Soccer: Amanda Hill and Mocha


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The Georgia SBDC Network provides low cost training and free consulting services including assistance with business plan development, market analysis and marketing strategies, financial analysis, compliance and legal issues, and preparation of loan submissions for individuals who want to start their own businesses or expand an existing one.
Rick Martin
B.A. in Biology, University of Texas at Austin
M.B.A. in International Business, University of South Carolina
International Trade Head
Rick has over 25 years experience in international business in both the public and private sectors. As Regional Director for a food processing equipment manufacturer, he established and developed distribution networks in Latin America and the Asia/Pacific region. Most of his time was spent actually visiting markets in these two regions and attending trade shows in Europe. He served as Assistant Director for International Trade with the Georgia Department of Economic Development. As an international trade consultant with University of Georgia's International Trade Center, Rick provides one-on–one trade consulting services to Georgia companies. In this role, he also develops export education programs for Georgia's business community.
Dimitris Kloussiadis
B.S. in Marketing, University Of Southwestern Louisiana
M.B.A. in International Business, Georgia State University
International Trade Consultant
A native of Greece, Mr. Kloussiadis previously held the position of International Marketing Manager for Transworld Trading Company, where he established an extensive network of international distributors and dealers who sold to large foreign commercial customers as well as the military establishments of the Middle Eastern and North African markets. Earlier in his career with this company, Mr. Kloussiadis was also responsible for importing & marketing marble from Italy, Greece, Belgium and Taiwan. In this capacity he worked with US architectural, construction and design companies and succeeded in securing bids for several major construction and renovation projects. Mr. Kloussiadis has traveled extensively overseas and has met with industry associations, as well as various foreign agents and distributors to introduce and market US products and services. He identified, evaluated and established distribution networks, generated international sales, negotiated international payment terms and was personally involved in licensing, distribution and joint ventures agreements for the European, South African, South American, Asian and Australian markets. Mr. Kloussiadis also owned a company which imported & marketed European women's clothing to major high-end U.S. department stores.
Bob Erwin
B. Arch., Syracuse University, 1974
B. A. in Psychology, Syracuse University, 1978
M. Arch., Syracuse University, 1978 Phi Kappa Phi
International Trade Consultant
Prior to joining the SBDC, Mr. Erwin held various positions in the Georgia Department of Industry, Trade, & Tourism (GDITT), including Senior International Trade Specialist, and Director of the International Trade Division. There he managed programs which took hundreds of Georgia companies to overseas trade events, and generated in excess of $200 million in documented export sales. Before joining GDITT, he served as the Executive Director of the American Building Products Export Council, in Washington DC, a trade association of more than 135 of the country's leading building product exporters. He also served as Vice Consul (Commercial) at the British Consulate-General, in Atlanta, where he coordinated British building sector marketing throughout the United States. Other positions have included Senior Architect with Steven Winter Associates; Vice President and Technical Director with Kaltek, Inc., an international management consulting firm; and Head, Building Research Applications, at the Southern Solar Energy Center, a prime contractor to the U.S. Department of Energy. Mr. Erwin has directed international trade programs and traveled extensively throughout Europe, Asia, and Latin American. He is also a registered Architect.
Darrel C. Hulsey
B.B.A. in Marketing, North Georgia College
M.B.A. in Finance, Brenau University
Business Consultant
Mr. Hulsey previously worked for a large commercial bank serving in various lending and management positions. He also has experience as an independent financial consultant performing acquisition/merger, loan portfolio and credit system analysis for banks. After joining the SBDC in 1992, Mr. Hulsey has worked extensively in the following areas: loan proposal preparation, financial analysis, business valuations and alternative financing.
Click here to meet the people of our International Trade Division located at the Gwinnett Center.
"Jeff Lebedin is a very determined person,"says SBDC Consultant Darrel Hulsey. "This determination -- coupled with a good product and good business model -- is his key to success."
- Jeff Lebedin, President and Owner
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setreuid, setregid - set real and/or effective user or group ID
int setreuid(uid_t ruid, uid_t euid); int setregid(gid_t rgid, gid_t egid);
setreuid sets real and effective user IDs of the current process. Unprivileged users may only set the real user ID to the real user ID or the effective user ID, and may only set the effective user ID to the real user ID, the effective user ID or the saved user ID.
Supplying a value of -1 for either the real or effective user ID forces the system to leave that ID unchanged.
If the real user ID is set or the effective user ID is set to a value not equal to the previous real user ID, the saved user ID will be set to the new effective user ID.
Completely analogously, setregid sets real and effective group ID's of the current process, and all of the above holds with __
On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.
The current process is not the super-user and changes other than (i) swapping the effective user (group) ID with the real user (group) ID, or (ii) setting one to the value of the other or (iii) setting the effective user (group) ID to the value of the saved user (group) ID was specified.
Setting the effective user (group) ID to the saved user ID is possible since Linux 1.1.37 (1.1.38).
BSD 4.3 (the setreuid and setregid function calls first appeared in 4.2BSD).
getuid(2), getgid(2), setuid(2), setgid(2), seteuid(2), setresuid(2)
11 pages link to setreuid(2):
lib/main.php:944: Notice: PageInfo: Cannot find action page


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COLUMBIA, S.C. -- South Carolina Democrats have dropped their request that votes in Richland County be recounted under state police supervision, saying in court papers filed Tuesday that they had been reassured by county officials that they could accurately count the votes without court intervention.
But since the dispute over ballots in the county that is home to the state capital has also reached the states highest court, counting wont resume without a decision from that court as well.
Last week, ballots and voting machines were placed in state police custody after a circuit judge granted Democrats request to recount all Richland County votes. That order followed a cascading Election Day mess that included broken voting machines and hours-long lines, with many not actually voting until well after polls had closed, and others giving up their quest altogether.
Democrats originally asked for a recount in House District 75, but that request was expanded county wide several hours later. Richland Countys preliminary tally showed Republican Kirkman Finlay as the races unofficial winner by a narrow margin less than 300 votes over Democrat Joe McCulloch. Based on results provided by election officials, The Associated Press called the race on Election Day for McCulloch. The AP withdrew that call after election officials changed vote tallies to show Finlay in the lead and has not declared a winner.
Circuit Judge Casey Manning ordered all Richland County ballots be held by state police, who would observe as votes were counted. But that effort was put on hold after state Republicans took their objections to the state Supreme Court, arguing in court papers that the lower court judge didnt have the authority to order the recount. Supreme Court justices had originally given Democrats and Republicans until noon Tuesday to submit paperwork over the dispute. In its dismissal paperwork, filed in local court, the Democratic Party said it agreed with county election officials that all ballots and voting machines should be returned to the county, which would have until 5 p.m. Friday to process the votes.
State election officials have said Richland County was the only one of the states 46 counties that reported serious problems. County officials have not explained how the problems occurred, and state legislators from the area have said they want to hold a hearing over the issues, and state GOP Chairman Chad Connelly had said he plans to form a task force to see what happened.
One candidate who lost a bid for Richland County council has called for new elections to be held, accusing county officials of intentionally not putting out enough voting machines on Election Day. According to state law, the county agency that runs that areas elections should provide at least one voting machine for each 250 registered voters in that precinct. Richland County officials have said they sent out less than 800 machines for Richland Countys 244,721 registered voters, which averages to about one machine per 305 voters. The county left more than 100 machines behind in case they needed to be dispatched because of problems.
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