Dharmendra S. Modha

My Work and Thoughts.

Cognitive Systems Colloquium: Videos

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Guest Post by Ben G. Shaw, Organizing Chair of Cognitive Systems Colloquium.

This is continued from the previous post dated November 12, 2014.

To highlight the transformative potential of IBM’s Neurosynaptic System and its impact on computation in the Cognitive Era, IBM Research hosted nearly 200 eminent thinkers and pioneers in the field of brain-inspired computing at the IBM Research – Almaden Cognitive Systems Colloquium. The program featured over a dozen outstanding speakers and distinguished panelists. Attendees included nearly 200 thought leaders and potential early adopters from government, industry, academia, research and the venture community.

Recurring Themes of the Day:

  • The Brain: how advances in understanding nature’s most efficient and powerful computational substrate are revealing new paradigms for computing
  • Technology: as von Neumann computation comes up against fundamental limitations that are bringing Moore’s law to an end, how new approaches can revolutionize important classes of computation
  • Applications: how efficient, embedded neural computation may benefit individuals, businesses and society by making objects, environments and systems more aware and responsive
  • Ecosystems: how new technologies and offerings will gain breadth, depth and momentum to transform industries from robotics to healthcare, agriculture to mobile devices, transportation to public safety.

SyNAPSE Deep Dive:

In addition to reviewing the state of knowledge in the field of brain-inspired computing and a forward-looking panel discussion, participants took a concentrated “Deep Dive” into the recently announced IBM Neurosynaptic System including the 1-million neuron TrueNorth chip, architecture, development boards, programming paradigm, applications, education and ecosystem. Inspired by the brain, TrueNorth is an architecture and a substrate for non-von Neumann, event-driven, multi-modal, real-time spatio-temporal pattern recognition, sensory processing and integrated sensor-actuator systems. TrueNorth’s extreme power efficiency and inherent scalability will revolutionize applications in mobile and embedded systems, at the same time allowing neural algorithms to achieve previously unattainable scales, running quickly, efficiently and natively in hardware.

Distinguished Speakers and Panelists:

Audience:

The audience included luminaries such as Turing Prize Awardee, Ivan Sutherland, and Von Neumann Prize Awardee, Nimrod Megiddo. Four IBM Fellows were in attendance (Ronald Fagin, C. Mohan, Hamid Pirahesh, Stuart Parkin), as were prominent founders and visionaries in the field of brain-inspired computing, including Warren Hunt (UT Austin), Tim Lance (NYSERNet), Einar Gall (Neurosciences Institute), Gert Cauwenberghs (UCSD), Ken Kreutz-Delgado (UCSD) and Jeff Krichmar (UC Irvine).

Distinguished Alumnus Award

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On March 10, 2015, at the 56th Foundation Day of IIT Bombay, I was selected for Distinguished Alumnus Award. I am grateful for the education that I received at IIT Bombay, for my teachers, for my fellow students, for my hostel mates, for the mess workers who fed me for four years, for the support staff, for my colleagues at IBM, and, of course, my family. Of the nearly 50,000 alumni, to date, roughly 100 have been honored. Previous Awardees include Nandan Nilekani and Kanwal Rekhi as well as two IBM Fellows Subramanian Iyer and Ramesh Agarwal.

IIT Bombay
Photo Credit: Hita Bambhania-Modha