Blue Brain, is the name of the first virtual brain being built by IBM.

1. BLUE BRAIN
FIRST ARTIFICIAL BRAIN IN THE WORLD
By
VarunGuptA

2. CONTENTS
• Introduction
• What is Blue Brain?
• Need of Virtual Brain
• Function of Natural Brain
• Brain Simulation
• Softwares Requirements
• Hardware Requirements
• Uploading Human Brain
• Advantages and Disadvantages
• Conclusion

3. INTRODUCTION
• The Most powerful creation of god is Human Brain.
• Attempt of reverse engineer the Human Brain.
• Project founded by Henry Markram at EPFL (Ecole
Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne), in Lausanne,
Switzerland.
• Simulations are carried out on Blue Gene Supercomputer
built by IBM and hence the name “BLUE BRAIN”.
• Simulation is based on Michael Hine’s NEURON, together
with other custom built components.
• Complete Simulation of HUMAN BRAIN will be possible by
2023 if proper funding is received.

4. What is Blue Brain?
• Virtual Brain (which is not actually a brain but acts as one)
• “BLUE BRAIN” is the name of the first artificial brain in the world
which is being developed by IBM.
• Possible by using a super computer, with huge storage capacity,
processing power and an interface between human brain and the
artificial one.

5. Need of Virtual Brain
• Different quotients like Intelligence Quotient,
Emotional Quotient etc will be different in
different individuals.
• Society needs Intelligence for development.
• U.K had asked Sir M.V’s Brain.
• Virtual Brain will be useful to keep the
intelligence even after the death of the person.

6. Functioning of Human Brain
• Works through electric pulses through our
body.
• Three Simple functions puts into action…
– Sensory Input
– Integration
– Motor Output

7. BRAIN SIMULATION

8. SoftwaresRequirement
• We mainly require 3 Softwares for the purpose of
simulation and visualization of results.
• They are
– NEURON
– BBP-SDK
– RTNeuron

9. NEURON
• It is a primary software package used by BBP
for neural simulations.
• Developed by Michael Hines
and John Moore in 1990s.
• Written in C,C++ and Fortran.
• Open source software
• Michael Hines and BBP Team
collaborated in 2005 to port the package into
Blue Gene Supercomputer.

10. BBP-SDK
BBP-SDK is a Blue Brain Project
Software Development Kit.
It is a set of APIs that allows researchers
to utilize and inspect models and
simulations.
Is a C++ library wrapped in Java and
Python.

11. RTNeuron
• RTNeuron is the primary application used by the BBP team
for visualization of neural simulations.
• It is a software written specifically for neural simulations.
i.e., it is not generalizable to other types of simulation.
• Silicon Graphics: A 32-processor Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI)
system with 300 Gb of shared memory is used for
visualization of results.

12. Hardware Requirements
•Blue Gene/P
•JuQUEEN
We require
two things
in order to
develop a
Virtual
brain. They
are

13. Blue Gene/P
• It is the primary machine used by the BBP
• Built by IBM
• Technical Specs
– 4,096 quad-core nodes
– Each core is a PowerPC 450, 850 MHz
– Total: 56 teraflops, 16 terabytes of memory
– 4 racks, one row, wired as a 16x16x16 3D torus
– 1 PB of disk space, GPFS parallel file system
– Operating system: Linux SuSE SLES 10

14. Blue Gene/P
• This machine peaked at 99th place in fastest
supercomputers in the world in 2009.

15. JuQUEEN
It is a Blue
Gene/Q
Supercomputer
by IBM
Installed at the
Julich Research
Center, in
Germany in 2012.
This is being used
by the BBP from
2013.
Main aim of
JuQUEEN is to
provide three
dimensional,
realistic model of
the human brain.

16. Uploading Human Brain
• By use of small robots called ‘Nanobots’.
• Small enough to travel through our circulatory
system.
• Monitors the activity and structure of our central
nervous system by travelling into spine and brain.

17. Nanobots could also carefully scan
the structure of our brain,
providing a complete readout of
the connections.
This information, when entered
into a computer, could then
continue to function as us.
Thus the data stored in the entire
brain will be uploaded into the
computer.
Uploading Human Brain

18. Advantages
Things can
be
remembered
without any
effort.
Decisions can
be made
without the
presence of
the person.
Intelligence
will be used
even after
the death of
the person.
Helps in
curing many
psychological
diseases

19. Disadvantages
Human beings will
become completely
dependent on
Computer Systems 
Knowledge can
be misused by
hackers 
Computer Viruses
will cause
increasingly
critical threat

20. Conclusion
At the end, we will be able
to transfer ourselves to
computer. This may give
answers to lot of
unanswered questions in
Neurology or even help in
curing number of
neurological diseases. If the
proper fundings are
received, we will have a
BLUE BRAIN in 2023.