Microchip Mimics a Brain With 200,000 Neurons

Al writes "European researchers have taken a step towards replicating the functioning of the brain in silicon, creating new custom chip with the equivalent of 200,000 neurons linked up by 50 million synaptic connections. The aim of the Fast Analog Computing with Emergent Transient States (FACETS) project is to better understand how to construct massively parallel computer systems modeled on a biological brain. Unlike IBM's Blue Brain project, which involves modeling a brain in software, this approach makes it much easier to create a truly parallel computing system. The set-up also features a distributed algorithm that introduces an element of plasticity, allowing the circuit to learn and adapt. The researchers plan to connect thousands of chips to create a circuit with a billion neurons and 10^13 synapses (about a tenth of the complexity of the human brain)."

Comments

Re:This is nothing.

[GospelHead821]

You might be correct, but it is also possible that the "humanity" of the human brain is an emergent property that manifests only when there's a certain critical mass of grey matter. Developing synthentic neural systems with more and more neurons is likely, if nothing else, to test the hypothesis that consciousness, for some arbitrary definition thereof, is emergent.

Re:That's it... we're dead

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that deep down, most people believe that killing off the humans would be the intelligent decision.

Re:That's it... we're dead

[vadim_t]

Paraphrasing a book (forget the name), if you took a dog and made its brain 1000 times faster, all you'd get is a dog that needs 1/1000th of the time to decide whether to sniff your crotch.

Thinking faster would certainly be very useful, but it may not necessarily mean that the output will be of a higher quality.

Re:That's it... we're dead

[averner]

If you consider complexity of the universe to be a good thing and a dull, uniform universe to be a bad thing, then humanity has done its share to make the universe better. Of course, "good" is subjective, but you probably already knew that before asking.

Don't underestimate complexity of brain...

[Temujin_12]

I didn't read the featured article, but whenever I see "X program/system mimics brain" I always try to pipe in with my 2 cents.

Any system that considers a brain as nothing but a series of perceptron-based connections is going to fall short of the neurology of the actual brain it is trying to mimic. Ask any neurologist and they will tell you that there many other dimensions at play in the human brain. For instance, the whole system itself is sitting in a chemical bath which can change at any moment with the right mixture of hormones or other chemical changes. These changes in chemistry affect the firing and working of the neurons, axons, and synapses. Combine this with the control of external factors such as DNA, RNA, and epigenitics and things start getting exponentially complex.

I don't mean to down-play the progress we're making in this field. I just hate it when I see the "Computer system with X-sized neural network must equal a brain with X-number of neurons" mentality.