The new company, Numenta, will employ what it claims is a new type of computer memory patterned after the human brain. The new technology will help computers solve problems they currently are unable to solve, the two said in a statement released Thursday (March 24).

Hawkins said he has been researching how the brain works and recently published a book on the subject titled On Intelligence.

"My goal at Numenta is to put my brain theory into practice," Hawkins said in a statement. "We have the opportunity to build intelligent memory systems to solve difficult problems in computer science and artificial intelligence for which no other known solutions exist, such as general machine vision, language understanding and robotics."

Dubinsky, who previously served as CEO of both Palm Computing and, later, Handspring, will be CEO of Numenta. "The Numenta vision is large in scope and long term," Dubinsky said. "Although it may take several years before we have commercial products, the possibilities for this technology are exciting and broad."

Hawkins will continue his current role as chief technology officer for palmOne. After founding Palm Computing in the mid-90's, the company was acquired by U.S. Robotics and, later, 3Com before spinning off as its own company. More recently, palmOne, which develops and sells devices, and PalmSource, which develops the Palm OS, spun off from each other.