IBM and its collaborators have been awarded $4.9 million in funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the first phase of DARPA’s Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) initiative.

IBM’s proposal, “Cognitive Computing via Synaptronics and Supercomputing (C2S2),” outlines groundbreaking research over the next nine months in areas including synaptronics, material science, neuromorphic circuitry, supercomputing simulations and virtual environments.

Initial research will focus on demonstrating nanoscale, low power synapse-like devices and on uncovering the functional microcircuits of the brain. The long-term mission of C2S2 is to demonstrate low-power, compact cognitive computers that approach mammalian-scale intelligence.

“Exploratory research is in the fabric of IBM’s DNA,” said Josephine Cheng, IBM Fellow and vice president of IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose.

“We believe that our cognitive computing initiative will help shape the future of computing in a significant way, bringing to bear new technologies that we haven’t even begun to imagine."

"The initiative underscores IBM’s capabilities in bold, exploratory research and interest in powerful collaborations to understand the way the world works.”

IBM has assembled a multi-dimensional, integrated world-class team of researchers and collaborators led by Dr. Dharmendra Modha, manager of IBM’s cognitive computing initiative, to take on the challenge.

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