Researchers from IBM are working on a new software front-end for their neuromorphic processor chips. The company is hoping to draw inspiration from its recent successes in “cognitive computing,” a line of R&D that’s best exemplified by Watson, the Jeopardy-playing AI. The new programming language will be necessary because once IBM’s cognitive computers become a reality, they’ll need a completely new one to run them. Many of today’s computers still use programming derived from FORTRAN, a language developed in the 1950s for ENIAC.

The new software runs on a conventional supercomputer, but it simulates the functioning of a massive network of neurosynaptic cores. Each core contains its own network of 256 neurons which function according to a new model in which digital neurons mimic the independent nature of biological neurons. Corelets, the equivalent of “programs,” specify the basic functioning of neurosynaptic cores and can be linked into more complex structures. Each corelet has 256 outputs and inputs, which are used to connect to one another.

“Traditional architecture is very sequential in nature, from memory to processor and back,” explained Dr. Dharmendra Modha in a recent Forbes article. “Our architecture is like a bunch of LEGO blocks with different features. Each corelet has a different function, then you compose them together.”

So, for example, a corelet can detect motion, the shape of an object, or sort images by color. Each corelet would run slowly, but the processing would be in parallel.

IBM has created more than 150 corelets as part of a library that programmers can tap.

Eventually, IBM hopes to create a cognitive computer scaled to 100 trillion synapses.

Ref: New Computer Programming Language Imitates The Human Brain – io9
Ref: Cognitive Computing Programming Paradigm: A Corelet Language for Composing Networks of Neurosynaptic Cores – IBM Research [paper]