US: Computing rivalling human brain possible by 2019

Computers capable of mimicking the human brain's power and efficiency could be just 10 years off, according to a leading researcher at IBM, writes Daniel Terdiman for CNET News. According to researcher Dharmendra Modha, manager of IBM's cognitive computing initiative, scientists from IBM and some of the world's top universities have already managed to simulate the computing complexity of the feline cortex - a feat that could augur a day not too far off when it will be possible to ramp up to what the human brain can accomplish.

Last year IBM and five universities were awarded a DARPA contract to work on a cognitive computing project aimed at eventually achieving that goal. Just a year later, Modha said, his team, working in conjunction with the universities' scientists, have achieved two major milestones.

The first was a real-time cortical simulation that achieved more than a billion spiking neurons, as well as 10 trillion individual learning synapses. That exceeds what a cat's cortex is capable of. Second, the scientists created a fresh algorithm they're calling BlueMatter that is aimed at spelling out the connections between all the human brain's cortical and sub-cortical locations. That mapping is a critical step, Modha suggested, for a true understanding of how the brain communicates and processes information.
Full report on the CNET News site