IBM's brain-inspired chip could be the fastest at running AI yet

A brain-inspired computer chip can run AI-powered image recognition operations 22 times faster than comparable commercial chips, and with 25 times the energy efficiency. The IBM NorthPole chip intertwines its computational capability with associated memory blocks that store information. This allows it to bypass the so-called the von Neumann bottleneck – named after computing pioneer John von Neumann – which describes how modern computers slow down while waiting on information exchanges between more separated compute and memory units. The melding of computation and memory was inspired by the way the human brain works. IBM had previously built a chip based on this idea called TrueNorth. But NorthPole transforms the technology into a digital architecture that is compatible with the silicon chip technology used in contemporary computers.