Eco-Friendly AI: IBM’s new chip will work like human brain, know full details

IBM has invented a ‘brain-like’ energy-efficient chip. Indeed, symbolic image Major US technology company IBM has developed a prototype of a chip that works like a human brain. According to a BBC report quoting IBM, the chip will be extremely efficient with artificial intelligence (AI) operations.

AI requires multiple computers to work together. Running so many computers also consumes more power. Which is harmful for the environment. According to IBM, their chip could be used to make smartphone AI chips, which would be more efficient.

“The human mind can do amazing things with far less power than a normal computer,” said Thanes Vasilopoulos, a scientist at IBM’s research lab in Zurich, Switzerland.

He also told the BBC that being more energy efficient means being able to execute more and more complex instructions with less energy. The chip will be particularly useful in applications where power supplies are limited and battery power is required, such as in cars, mobile phones and cameras.

Cloud service providers can also use this chip to reduce power consumption and carbon footprint.

Be that as it may, a digital to analog chip is usually digital. That is, such a chip stores data in binary numbers (0 and 1). IBM’s new chip includes a component called the ‘MemoryStore’ (memory register). It works in analog process and can store all types of numbers. Just like the human brain, IBM’s memristors act like synapses of neurons in the brain.

Ferrante Neri, a professor at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom, said Memristor was inspired by nature. It mimics the functioning of the brain. A mnemonic can remember the history of electrical changes in the same way that synapses work in biology. Interconnected memory stores can form networks like neurons in the brain.