(October 7) From Circuits to Cognitive Computing: Big opportunities from Hardware perspectives

Mobile and Cloud computing have been enabling cyberspace accessible to virtually everyone and transforming the daily lives of people for the better. We truly live in the world with the explosion of computing devices and data. Sensors are everywhere and the data generated from them (including mobile devices) grow at a faster rate than the rate at which processing capacity grows. The demand for higher computing capacity and intelligent processing is stronger than ever before. In this talk, I will go over the new computing paradigm, Cognitive Computing, to address this trend. Then, I’ll give an overview of a few related interesting yet transformative projects that are going on in IBM research. The topics range from circuits (P/Z processors with sub-20nm technologies) to system architectures for big data applications (OpenPower project) to cognitive computing (SyNAPSE, the brain inspired Neurosynaptic chip). Then, I will conclude the talk that this is an exciting time to be a computer & electrical engineers with tremendous opportunities lying ahead.