PetaVision

From FutureNovo - Anticipating things to come

PetaVision is a computer program which models the human visual cortex. Run on the IBM "Roadrunner" supercomputer in 2008, PetaVision mimicks more than 1 billion visual neurons and trillions of synapses. Because there are about a quadrillion synapses in the human brain, human cognition is considered a petaflop/s computational problem.

[edit] Background

Los Alamos researchers used PetaVision to model more than a billion visual neurons surpassing the scale of 1 quadrillion computations a second (a petaflop/s).

“Roadrunner ushers in a new era for science at Los Alamos National Laboratory,” said Terry Wallace, associate director for Science, Technology and Engineering at Los Alamos. “Just a week after formal introduction of the machine to the world, we are already doing computational tasks that existed only in the realm of imagination a year ago.”

Based on the results of PetaVision’s inaugural trials, Los Alamos researchers believe they can study in real time the entire human visual cortex. The ability to model human levels of cognitive performance on a digital computer could lead to important insights and revolutionary technological applications.