A Million Node Supercomputer

An anonymous reader writes "Veteran of microcomputing Steve Furber, in his role as ICL Professor of Computer Engineering in the School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester, has called upon some old friends for his latest project: a brain-simulating supercomputer based on more than a million ARM processors." More detailed information can be found in the research paper.

Comments

Re:Build a mouse brain first.

[geekoid]

Great, you read the paper. DId you laso read the paper and studies that lead to thins? did you know they have already simulated a few neurons? and the activity looked like the human brain? no? STFU.

IN our likely life time, we will have a simulated brain. This will just be one piece of a larger model.
Once we have the model, we will be able to do a lot of things. What to simulate damage and look at long term effects? Speed up the model, get a years worth of data in days. Want to studies some thing closer? slow it down. Want to test environmental impacts? spin off several copies and simulate different environments.

We will learn how we think, how to enhance out perceptions, new drugs, better treatments, and most importantly, remove the mystical thinking the surrounds the brain/mind.

Don't confuse AI with brain simulation, they are different things. Cog is a robotic apparatus designed to let people learn real world application and testing of AI functions. It does stuff. In building it they actually learned quite a lot, so it wasn't a 'dead end' what ever the hell that means in regard to science.
If memory serves, it did all kinds of things. Simulate sawing, for one.