At year's end, IBM (IBM) selects a new innovation that has the potential to change the world.
This time it chose cognitive computers. This new generation of computers will be designed to mimic the human senses of touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell. Computers will learn and adapt.
IBM, which late Tuesday released Q4 results that beat expectations, predicts cognitive computers will emerge over the next five years. Some of the technology is here, but more needs to be achieved before all the pieces of the puzzle fit, Bernie Meyerson, IBM vice president of innovation, explains in an interview with IBD.
IBM's Watson computer, which beat two leading "Jeopardy" champs in 2011, embodies cognitive computing. View Enlarged Image
IBD: Why does IBM say cognitive systems are the new wave in computing?
Meyerson: If you look at traditional computing, it was driven mostly by the fact that you continuously scaled microprocessor chips down in size (to add more circuitry and boost performance of the machines they power). People are familiar with this described as Moore's Law (coined by Intel (INTC) co-founder Gordon Moore).
It is important to understand that we have traveled an immense distance, but there is a limit to Moore's Law. In three or four more generations, we are done. You won't be scaling transistor technology smaller any longer. Silicon will still be important. You will stack chips to make more dense blocks. But at the end of the day, one of the biggest buttons we press for constant advances will be gone.
IBD: And so cognitive computing will then come into play?
Meyerson: Cognitive computing is a completely different approach to drive performance in computers. These machines will perform better because they learn, they adapt, they sense — and by doing that you don't program it so much as you can teach the system to learn. That is incredibly efficient, compared to what you can do today, where you literally type in millions of lines of code to get the machine to do what you want. This is a machine that can observe and follow.
IBD: Meaning the machine becomes more humanlike?
Meyerson: What makes humans so efficient are your senses. You have touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell. This makes humans a far more efficient machine in comparison to a computer.
When IBM put its Watson computer against (two) Jeopardy world champions, keep in mind that Watson was powered by 80,000 watts. The individual people it went against were running at about 20 watts. So with one-4,000th of the power, they stayed in the game (though Watson won). This tells you there is something very different going on between those two systems.