IBM Takes a (Feline) Step Toward Thinking Machines

bth writes "A computer with the power of a human brain is not yet near. But this week researchers from IBM Corp. are reporting that they've simulated a cat's cerebral cortex, the thinking part of the brain, using a massive supercomputer. The computer has 147,456 processors (most modern PCs have just one or two processors) and 144 terabytes of main memory — 100,000 times as much as your computer has."

Comments

Re:How hard is it to simulate a cat's brain on 1 c

[tomhudson]

I've known people who wouldn't pass the Turing Test in normal conversation.

Somebody should try doing this for ... well, anyone famous really. The French government, Silvio Berlusconi, Theo de Raadt, Linus Torvalds ... all good targets, I suspect!

Sarah Palin.

10 INPUT $S 20 PRINT "It's not my fault! " . TRIM(SUBSTR($S, RND(10), RND(8))) " is to blame!" 30 GOTO 10

Question: Has Sarah Palin read her new book?

Re:Cat-Brain Tech

[mcgrew]

Unfortunately the system seems limited to short range applications, as missiles seem to loose interest after a couple minutes.

Then it's a poor simulation of a cat brain; they don't set their interest free after a short time. Cats will patiently wait for their prey for hours, and will play with their prey for long periods of time before eating it or presenting it to their kittens or owners.

You must be mistaking them for dogs. Or slashdot trolls (their brains would be a lot easier to simulate).