News & Analysis
EE Times 40th: 10 electronics visionaries to watch
R Colin Johnson
11/7/2012 5:38 AM EST
Dharmendra Modha-IBM
Dharmendra Modha is manager of cognitive computing at IBM Research - Almaden where his goal is to “engineer the mind by reverse engineering the brain.” Modha has already made important contributions to present day computing paradigms, having previously pioneered IBM’s adaptive cache algorithms for its enterprise storage controllers and its eClassifier data mining and visualization system.
Today Modha’s group is pioneering cognitive computers--cognizers--modeled on the human brain. His tactic is to first simulate the brain on IBM’s supercomputers, then emulate them with hardware microchips that mimic the neural networks of the human brain with systems of similar size and power consumption. Under Modha’s direction, IBM has already simulated the entire brain of a cat, and the white matter of the human brain, as well as fabricated its first generation of cognizer microchips with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (DARPA’s) Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) program.
Over the next decade Modha plans to scale up its simulations to mimic the entire human brain, then turn to hardware emulations with cognizer microchips that revolutionize computing as we know it.

Click on image to enlarge.
Source: IBM
Next: Lucy-Creative Virtual
Dharmendra Modha is manager of cognitive computing at IBM Research - Almaden where his goal is to “engineer the mind by reverse engineering the brain.” Modha has already made important contributions to present day computing paradigms, having previously pioneered IBM’s adaptive cache algorithms for its enterprise storage controllers and its eClassifier data mining and visualization system.
Today Modha’s group is pioneering cognitive computers--cognizers--modeled on the human brain. His tactic is to first simulate the brain on IBM’s supercomputers, then emulate them with hardware microchips that mimic the neural networks of the human brain with systems of similar size and power consumption. Under Modha’s direction, IBM has already simulated the entire brain of a cat, and the white matter of the human brain, as well as fabricated its first generation of cognizer microchips with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (DARPA’s) Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) program.
Over the next decade Modha plans to scale up its simulations to mimic the entire human brain, then turn to hardware emulations with cognizer microchips that revolutionize computing as we know it.

Click on image to enlarge.
Source: IBM
Next: Lucy-Creative Virtual
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Michael.Markowitz
11/8/2012 10:22 PM EST
I like this story, Colin, and I'm glad you picked a MEMS guy. While I acknowledge my strong bias--I am, after all the ST PR guy--I would like to suggest you picked the wrong one!
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agk
11/10/2012 3:16 AM EST
Interesting to read here RRAM,cat's brain in a micro chip,9axis gyro,animated human avatars in holography,i robot,smart prosthetic leg,spectrum utilization 10 fold higher,imaging each bond between atoms,smart zero energy homes and also see the scientists who are doing great work for the future earth.
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GREAT-Terry
11/13/2012 9:09 AM EST
All stories are great. I particularly like those stories related to the application with motion sensing and AI that I believe in not very long time can revolve our life to a new era.
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yalanand
11/17/2012 1:37 AM EST
Thanks for the list eetimes, thanks for introducing these great personalities behind the innovation. Its people like these who's innovation makes our lives better.
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resistion
11/17/2012 11:34 AM EST
I'd tone down the memristor hype, please. Go read the literature, see how far back this goes.
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specialkaye
11/24/2012 10:42 PM EST
Interesting assessment, but it’s not quite accurate. The technology itself is based on a couple key ingredients – natural language and a robust knowledge management platform that puts the control of the virtual assistant in the hands of the deploying company. As a result, each avatar deployed from the system is customized to suit the needs of the client and is specific to their domain. While Siri attempts to provide assistance utilizing a host of features on your iphone, avatars like Lucy have been created to provide assistance to customers with specific questions about their relationship with a specific company (i.e. a bank, travel company, telecommunications provider, retail store, etc.) Moreover, the content is at the discretion of user. Companies have the ability to aggregate their internal databases, CRM, BI tools and more, integrate with any app or web services platform and pull in information from community forums, blogs or other sources if they WANT to. This allows them to customize the experience and maintain control of their brand for a consistent, reliable and personalized experience. It may be worth taking another look at the technology to assess the true value it can provide. Comparing it to Siri and Watson is like apples and oranges
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nicolas.mokhoff
12/7/2012 12:17 PM EST
I agree with your assessments, specialkaye. While the comparison of Lucy to Siri may be ill-advised, the fact that both exist and are beginning to use speech recognition technology in the mass, albeit domain-specific markets,--in the case of Lucy,-- is a trend that will only grow in the next 20 years. Even with Siri the user is constrained to whatever was programmed for the "ideal" average pedestrian. It's clear that as long we can program the recognition algorithms we are in control; when handhelds become smart enough to tell the user what to do w/o being prompted,...
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C VanDorne
2/13/2013 4:06 PM EST
I saw 8 visionaries, not 10, and two things. Note to editors: I would still have read the story if it was entitled "Eight electronics visionaries to watch."
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5/19/2013 5:14 PM EDT
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