WASHINGTON: US computer giant IBM announced on Thursday that it has developed prototypes of computer chips that mimic the way the human brain works.

The Armonk, New York-based company known as “Big Blue” said the experimental “cognitive computing chips” could eventually lead to machines that “emulate the brain's abilities for perception, action and cognition.” “These chips are another significant step in the evolution of computers from calculators to learning systems, signalling the beginning of a new generation of computers,” said Dharmendra Modha, project leader for IBM Research.

“Future applications of computing will increasingly demand functionality that is not efficiently delivered by the traditional architecture,” Modha said. He said cognitive computers, like the human brain, would “learn through experiences, find correlations, create hypotheses, and remember — and learn from — the outcomes.”

The firm was “taking the architecture of the brain and saying 'Can we somehow make the electronics mimic what we know about the brain, how the brain works.'”  The chips could lead to computers able to ingest complex, real-time information through multiple sensors and translate it into action.

For example, a cognitive computing system monitoring the world's water supply could issue tsunami warnings using a network of sensors that monitor inputs such as temperature, pressure, wave height and acoustics.

So far, IBM said, it has managed to carry out simple applications using the prototype chips like navigation, pattern recognition and classification.

IBM said the cognitive computing chips replicate the biological synapses, neurons and axons of the human brain using algorithms and silicon circuitry.

They feature integrated memory (replicated synapses), computation (replicated neurons) and communication (replicated axons), it said.—AFP