A prototype microchip design that was revealed today by IBM could pave the way for a world of much smarter devices that don't rely on the cloud or even the Internet for their intelligence.

Patrick Tucker, Defense One

(TNS) — A prototype microchip design revealed today by IBM could pave the way for a world of much smarter devices that don't rely on the cloud or the internet for their intelligence. That could help soldiers who operate drones, ground robots, or augmented-reality gear against adversaries who can target electronic emissions. But the new chip—modeled loosely on the human brain—also paves the way for a different sort of AI, one that doesn't rely on big cloud and data companies like Amazon or Google.

Unlike traditional chips that separate memory from processing circuits, the NorthPole chip combines the two—like synapses in the brain that hold and process information based on their connection to other neurons. Writing in the journal Science, IBM researchers call it a "neural inference architecture that blurs this boundary by eliminating off-chip memory, intertwining compute with memory on-chip, and appearing externally as an active memory."

Why is that important and what does it have to do with the future? Today's computers have at least two characteristics that limit AI development.