February 4, 2016 – Oak Ridge National Laboratory will play host this summer to researchers whose goal is to design computers that combine the best of human and machine. ORNL’s Neuromorphic Computing Workshop (http://ornlcda.github.io/neuromorphic2016/index.html) is expected to attract participants from Department of Energy labs, universities and industry and will help chart a course to address the White House grand challenge to develop and transform computing as we know it. Katie Schuman, a Liane Russell Post-Doc Fellow and one of the conference organizers, noted that the focus is on emerging neuromorphic architectures that allow for computing flexibility, on-line system learning and understanding. “While our end goal is to develop computers that are inspired by the way the brain operates, our near-term goal is to write and scale programs that will enable upcoming supercomputers to simulate the behaviors of neuromorphic systems,” said Schuman, a member of the lab’s Intelligent Computing Research Team.
A neuromorphic, or brain-like, network reading and recognizing a handwritten number.