NYT-1201: STATE OF THE ART A Thermostat That's Clever, Not ...

neuroscience was a guiding principle as well. Bra
ins are low-power, nimble computing mechanisms — r
eal-world proof that it is possible.
A brain does its computing with a design drastical
ly different from today’s computers. Its processor
s — neurons — are, in computing terms, massively d
istributed; there are billions in a human brain. T
hese neuron processors are wrapped in its data mem
ory devices — synapses — so that the brain’s paths
of communication are extremely efficient and dive
rse, through the neuron’s axons, which conduct ele
ctrical impulses.
A machine that adopts that approach, Dr. Modha sai
d, would represent “a crucial shift away from von
Neumann computing.” He was referring to a design w
ith processor and memory physically separated and
connected by a narrow communications channel, or b
us, and operating according to step-by-step sequen
tial methods — the von Neumann architecture used i
n current computers, named after the mathematician
John von Neumann.
The concept of neuromorphic electronic systems is
more than two decades old; Carver Mead, a renowned
computer scientist, described such devices in an
engineering journal article in 1990. Earlier biolo
gically inspired devices, scientists say, were mos
tly analog, single-purpose sensors that mimicked o
ne function, like an electronic equivalent of a re
tina for sensing image data.
But the I.B.M. and university researchers are purs
uing a more versatile digital technology. “It seem
s that we can build a computing architecture that
is quite general-purpose and could be used for a l
arge class of applications,” said Rajit Manohar, a
professor of electrical and computer engineering
at Cornell University.
What might such applications be, 5 or 10 years fro