Ramona Adams
Four U.S. government agencies have released a white paper on a collective vision to develop a computer that can operate like the human brain.
The white paper published Friday detailed what the agencies view as technical priorities, challenges, opportunities and research and development issues related to the White House-led Nanotechnology-Inspired Grand Challenge for Future Computing program.
Collaborating agencies for the paper included the departments of Defense and Energy, National Science Foundation, National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Intelligence Community.
Partnerships between government agencies, industry, academia and nonprofit organizations are key to achieve the challenge, the document stated.
Research and development efforts under the program will involve focus areas such as applications; materials; devices and interconnects; computing architectures; brain-inspired approaches; fabrication/manufacturing; and software, modeling, and simulation.
The challenge also requires approaches that address new materials, devices, algorithms, software and their integration within new computing architectures, the white paper noted.
The White House announced the challenge in October 2015 to address the Obama Administration’s priorities including the National Nanotechnology Initiative, the National Strategic Computing Initiative and the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative.
The challenge aims to “create a new type of computer that can proactively interpret and learn from data, solve unfamiliar problems using what it has learned, and operate with the energy and efficiency of the human brain.”
