But the chip is the brain of the
computer
For years technically challenged news hacks have called the
silicon chip the brains of the computer. Now it seems that a group of
Euro boffins have created a chip that
really works like a human
brain.
Early prototypes of the chip had 384 neurons and 100,000 synapses,
but the latest version contains 200,000 neurons and 50 million
synapses. Apparently the chip is able to mimic the brain's ability to learn
more closely than any other machine.
Karlheinz Meier, a physicist at
Heidelberg University, in Germany, who has coordinated the Fast Analog
Computing with Emergent Transient States project said that even with a tiny
fraction of the number found in a brain, its design allows it to be scaled
up to create massively parallel, powerful new computers.
The project
aims to build 'neurons' using a standard eight-inch silicon wafer so that
they can produce the same sort of electrical activity as their biological
counterparts.
A neuron circuit typically consists of about 100 components,
while a synapse requires only about 20. However, because there are so much
more of them, the synapses take up most of the space on the wafer.
By
hardwiring the brain capability onto a chip means that researchers to
recreate the brain-like structure in a way that is truly parallel. The
current prototype can operate about 100,000 times faster than a real
human brain.