Aiming to put AI in Your Pocket

Mentioned this previously, now more in Singularity Hub on the topic:

MIT’s Tiny New Brain Chip Aims for AI in Your Pocket
By Jason Dorrier - Jun 11, 2020 in Singularity Hub

The human brain operates on roughly 20 watts of power (a third of a 60-watt light bulb) in a space the size of, well, a human head. The biggest machine learning algorithms use closer to a nuclear power plant’s worth of electricity and racks of chips to learn.

That’s not to slander machine learning, but nature may have a tip or two to improve the situation. Luckily, there’s a branch of computer chip design heeding that call. By mimicking the brain, super-efficient neuromorphic chips aim to take AI off the cloud and put it in your pocket.

The latest such chip is smaller than a piece of confetti and has tens of thousands of artificial synapses made out of memristors—chip components that can mimic their natural counterparts in the brain.

In a recent paper in Nature Nanotechnology , a team of MIT scientists say their tiny new neuromorphic chip was used to store, retrieve, and manipulate images of Captain America’s Shield and MIT’s Killian Court. Whereas images stored with existing methods tended to lose fidelity over time, the new chip’s images remained crystal clear.

“So far, artificial synapse networks exist as software. We’re trying to build real neural network hardware for portable artificial intelligence systems,” Jeehwan Kim, associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT said in a press release. “Imagine connecting a neuromorphic device to a camera on your car, and having it recognize lights and objects and make a decision immediately, without having to connect to the internet. We hope to use energy-efficient memristors to do those tasks on-site, in real-time.” ...   " 

Memristor Chips Emerge for Local Intelligence

The idea has been around for a while.  Getting closer to real synapses in real brains.   But still a considerable way to go.  As mentioned a means to produce IOT capabilities on local devices.  Paper and techical detail pointed to.  Requires considerable materials innovation.

Engineers put tens of thousands of artificial brain synapses on a single chip
The design could advance the development of small, portable AI devices.

Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office
June 8, 2020

MIT engineers have designed a “brain-on-a-chip,” smaller than a piece of confetti, that is made from tens of thousands of artificial brain synapses known as memristors — silicon-based components that mimic the information-transmitting synapses in the human brain.

The researchers borrowed from principles of metallurgy to fabricate each memristor from alloys of silver and copper, along with silicon. When they ran the chip through several visual tasks, the chip was able to “remember” stored images and reproduce them many times over, in versions that were crisper and cleaner compared with existing memristor designs made with unalloyed elements.

Their results, published today in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, demonstrate a promising new memristor design for neuromorphic devices — electronics that are based on a new type of circuit that processes information in a way that mimics the brain’s neural architecture. Such brain-inspired circuits could be built into small, portable devices, and would carry out complex computational tasks that only today’s supercomputers can handle.

“So far, artificial synapse networks exist as software. We’re trying to build real neural network hardware for portable artificial intelligence systems,” says Jeehwan Kim, associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “Imagine connecting a neuromorphic device to a camera on your car, and having it recognize lights and objects and make a decision immediately, without having to connect to the internet. We hope to use energy-efficient memristors to do those tasks on-site, in real-time.”  ... " 

Neuromorphic Chips

In Wired: 48 million neurons mimic the brain of a small rodent.  Increasingly we are looking at how to directly model the biological.   Is it better to mimic biological systems or to directly model them?   Also in Linkedin.

Uses for Neurosynaptic Chips

So what are the applications for neurosynaptic chips?  That are on the near horizon today?   Here are some examples  The Internet of Things is a marketer's dream for chip sales.   Especially to IOT applications that need sensory capabilities with low power requirements.   Or for neural net applications embedded in larger systems.  The article also contains more information about its approach, origins and directions.

Neurosynaptic Chips

Just announced in IBM Research:  " ... What is a cognitive chip? The latest SyNAPSE chip, introduced on August 7, 2014, has the potential to transform mobility by spurring innovation around an entirely new class of applications with sensory capabilities at incredibly low power levels. This is enabled by an revolutionary new technology design inspired by the human brain.  ... "  The attached infographic contains interesting comparisons.  Now how soon will this computing power be available?  More detailed paper.

" ... The architecture can solve a wide class of problems from vision, audition, and multi-sensory fusion, and has the potential to revolutionize the computer industry by integrating brain-like capability into devices where computation is constrained by power and speed ... "