Human brain is one of the most refined, complex and systematic creation by God. There are still millions of things that we need to understand about the human brain. It has intrigued scientists and engineers from a long time. The human brain is the most amazing computer that could ever be created. This is the reason why the brain is the favourite subject of study for engineers as well as scientists. It would be wonderful if they could create a machine that could replicate its processing mechanism.
IBM is one such company which has been trying in this direction, from quite a long time and is a strong proponent of cognitive computing. Their artificial intelligence programme ‘Watson’ was the first cognitive system ever created. For those who do not know, let us inform that cognitive computing refers to systems that learn at scale, reason with purpose and interact with humans naturally. So they are not explicitly programmed but learn and reason from their interactions with us and from their interaction with the environment.
IBM has been trying persistently in the direction of recreating the human brain’s cognitive computing power and recently they took a revolutionary step in this direction. Scientists at IBM have succeeded in creating artificial neurons that successfully respond to phase changes due to electric signals while using very little power imitating the human brain. The scientists designed these neurons using phase-change materials, including germanium antimony telluride. One should note that these two materials exhibit two states , amorphous and crystalline and are the same materials that made optical disk storage possible.
These phase-change-based artificial neurons can perform complex computations and fast learning while using very little energy, much like the human brain. Also, these artificial neurons survived being subjected to billions of switching cycles which would translate to multiple years of operation at an update frequency of 100Hz. IBM scientist and authorAbu Sebastian said: “This will significantly reduce the area and power consumption as it will be using tiny nanoscale devices that act as neurons.” The lines between human and machine intelligence are slowly fading!
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