Van der Merwe 1

Mark Van der Merwe

Freestone
A3
3/4/15
Youve Got a Friend In Me
Picture this. You go about your day, at work, at school, whatever it might be. You have
some schedule. Now imagine your smart phone can learn your habits, your schedule, what you
like, what you dont like. It can learn to be your friend, your personal assistant. Itll tell you where
the closest restaurant of your favorite chain is. Itll tell you when you should sleep based on your
habits. Itll learn not to allow text messages or alerts through when youve gone to bed or are in
class or a meeting. Even now we live in an era that has become defined by one thing:
technology. In every day life, you see hundreds of people using it, their necks craned down
toward their screens. Our hospitals and schools fill with new incredible technologies. This said,
the world of computing has so much more to offer. We have the potential for this personal
assistant. You can see the advancements of technology everywhere, with our computers and
gadgets seeming to just keep getting better, smaller, and faster. My dream since I was young
was to be able to take these technologies and do just that, make them even better than before.
And of course, make them awesome and useful. I want to create technologies that are going to
make the world a better, safer, more efficient place to live in. So naturally, the advancement of
technology is the field I wanted to delve into. I first found out about the Neuromorphic chips, and
then decided to dive into this field and learn exactly where the future lies. I learned that the

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future of computing, the hope of having that personal assistant in your pocket, rode on the
shoulders of neuromorphic chips. I then wanted to research how our computers currently work in
comparison to the new Neuromorphic chips. This led me on my path to learning about where
our technology is now, where it is going, and how Im going to one day change the world.
Before diving into research, I knew very little about the actual design and performance of
computers. I knew some basics like that a CPU is at the center of the system and data is sent to
it. I knew this CPU was responsible for letting us use this data in useful ways, but I didnt know
the details, so I decided to find out. Using the great power that is the internet, and a book on the
topic I had, I first looked at what we are currently using. The book really helped visualize and
describe in more simplistic terms the nature of the system before I dived into more hefty online
articles for the bulk of my research. What we now work upon is known as the Von Neumann
architecture. The way this works is simple. You enter in some sort of information, say words into
a document. This is converted into 0s and 1s, also known as bits, based upon an on/off
electrical current flow, and stored in your memory. This memory holds this data until such a time
as it is need. It is then sent to the CPU (central processing unit - where all the calculations are
executed). In the CPU, other bits telling the CPU what to do with the data it is receiving are used
perform out calculations on the data, allowing the computer to act based upon the input.
Basically, the system takes information and data and converts this data into numbers (binary
system) and then does calculations on them. In The New Way Things Work, by David
Macaulay, they explain this process as Bits in the form of on-off electric pulses come from the
memory and flash to the gates, which pass or block incoming bits so that new sets of bits

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emerge. These are blocked or allowed to pass based upon the instructions also flashed (this is
the movement of data) to the CPU. Through this process, when I hit the W key on my laptop, a
W appears on the screen. When Macaulay refers to the memory, it is talking about different
locations on the motherboard. In Von Neumann Architecture, the memory and CPU are for the
most part separated.
This system of work has been very effective up until this day, but it is reaching its limits.
This Von Neumann architecture works fantastically at performing large scale calculations.
However, providing more complex input, such as auditory or visual stimuli, tend to be too much
for this system. The applications such as Appless Siri or the Ok Google function on todays
phones access the cloud, an example of an off-device processing device, for their answers.
Todays personal-assistant services, such as Apples Siri and Google Now, are limited because
they must call out to the cloud for more powerful computers to answer or anticipate queries,
says MITs Technology reviews Robert D. Hof. This is because in the cloud they have access to
the expansive computing power to decode what you are saying to 0s and 1s and respond to it.
We cant do it in the phone because Von Neumann architecture is restricted in this aspect. In
order to up our computing power, we need to place more and more transistors (they are the tiny
on/off switches that use and manipulate those 1s and 0s) into less and less space. But these
transistors can only be packed so tightly before the heat becomes too much for the electronics.
This is why these phones access the cloud. But what if we could place the extreme computing
clouds of the google databases into one small chip in a phone or computer?

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Enter Neuromorphic chips. I stumbled upon these while looking through an MIT
technology review article online about the top up and coming technologies. These chips really
struck me as a field that had the potential to change computing. Researching online further
surfaced more articles from top technology websites. This subject was really intriguing to me
because this is a field of research I am interested in pursuing. This field is the future of
computing. These are chips designed to copy the single most incredible computing device we
know of: our brains. We, as humans, are able to learn and adapt to stimuli in a way that is
phenomenal. We dont have to be told that something is a tree, or something is a dog or human
just because weve never seen it before. The Neurons in our brain can uniquely not only work on
data in a parallel way but can also reconnect in new ways to do what humans do best: learn.
This new technology can be broken down into two pieces, the storage of sensory data
and the structure of the computational device. In terms of data storage, one idea involves the
use of conventional transistors to decode the data. What is different is data is now stored as a
pattern of pulses, or bits, depending upon what it is. The chip can encode data as patterns of
pulses, which is similar to one of the many ways neuroscientists think the brain stores
information, quotes Daniela Hernandez from her Wired article on the subject. If we store
information in this manner, we can better capture the stimuli as the brain would. The other
method being considered for the storage of information is analog chips. In the current
computers, transistors make it so that information is stored at either 0s or 1s, with no middle
ground. What an analog chip allows us to do is essentially store it more as neural spikes, the
way some scientists believe the brain handles this data.

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Whats next to completing the puzzle? The placement of the parts. As shown before, Von
Neumann architecture computers access data through buses (wires connecting the parts of
the chip) that connect parts such as the CPU and the RAM(memory- where the bits are placed
when not in use). What this means is in a traditional Von Neumann chip, the calculations are not
being done in real time, since it takes time for the data to travel through the buses to the
different parts. We are therefore slowing down the speed of the computer and limiting its
performance. To solve this, what researchers at IBM (International Business Machines
Corporation- a large-scale technology company), a leading company in the development of
Neuromorphic chips, have done is place the processing and memory units together in each
location, essentially making each one a neuron. In the brain, the data and calculations occur
all within a neuron, not in separate places such as in a Von Neumann computer. What this
means is a packet of data and the calculations to be done on it are put tightly together so that
the input can go in and the output can be received at a much higher pace, since we cut out the
travel time. In her article on Neuromorphic Chips, Daniela Hernandez explains it like this:
They pack the memory, computation and communication parts into little modules that
process information locally but can communicate with each other easily and
quickly.

This, IBM researchers say, resembles the circuits found in the brain,

where the

separation of computation and storage isn't as cut and dry, and it's

what buys the thing

added energy efficiency -- arguably the chip's best selling point to

date.
-Daniela Hernandez

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What this is showing is that by packing the CPU and memory together into modules, they are
able to emulate the brains structure, allowing for real-time reaction speeds, higher processing
power, and far less energy use. What putting these things together allows us to do is develop
parallel thinking in computers. We have to shift from long sequential thinking to short parallel
thinking, says IBM cognitive computing leader, Dharmendra Modha. By doing this we allow
faster, more reliable responses to given input. We handle data not as one calculator handling a
long string of calculations but as hundreds of separate calculators splitting the work between
them.
So what are the applications of this system? This technology could give you a smart,
reliable, learning, companion to assist you. Your phone can learn to do things, like wake you up
at given times according to your schedule, and not do things, like ring during a meeting or during
class. It can learn your favorite restaurants and tell you the local options when you're on a trip. It
can remind you to take pills, to call a friend, and can answer your questions quickly and
efficiently. We are opening the doors on a whole new world of smart technologies, ones that can
affectively increase the productivity, safety, and quality of life for humankind. This research has
been hugely significant to me as a person intent upon changing the technology of the world for
the better, if at all possible. I was not only able to strengthen my understanding of current
technological systems, but I was also able to learn more about where this is going and the
applications surrounding the future of computing. I learned that the future of computing lies in
the field of neuromorphic chips, the chip designed to process, store, and act upon information
like the brain does. This will open the doors of technology and institute a whole new

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development to the process that gave us the wheel, the car, and the phone. It will introduce a
new era of technology, and I plan to be leading the charge.

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Works Cited

1. 3. Features of a Von Neumann Architecture." Teach-ICT. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Mar. 2015.

2. Hernandez, Daniela. "IBM Reveals 'brain-like' Chip with 4,096 Cores (Wired UK)." Wired UK.
N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Mar. 2015.

3. Hof, Robert D. "Neuromorphic Chips." MIT Technology Review. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Mar. 2015.

4. Cognitive Computing: The SyNAPSE Project." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 08 Mar. 2015.

5. Macaulay, David, Neil Ardley, and David Macaulay. "The Digital Domain." The New Way
Things Work. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. N. pag. Print.