Silicon Brain

[Tunnelcat]

One step closer to building a full hardware simulation of the human brain. The Neurogrid. Let there be silicon dreams.

http://theinstitute.ieee.org/people/stu ... mics-brain

[roid]

It simulates 1 million silicon neurons. The human brain has ~ one hundred billion. So it needs to be only 1 hundred thousand times bigger, that's not bad TBH.
There's already been talk of a billion neurons. We're getting there.

From OP's article though:

There are approximately 100 billion electrically excitable neurons in the brain to process information. “A defining characteristic is that they communicate with each other via electrical impulses, which are analogous to digital packets,” says Fok.

Weird. AFAIK all Neurons communicate with eachother via chemical neuro-transmitters across the synaptic cleft, not via electrical impulses. Electrical impulses are how neurons transmit messages across themselves (ie: from one side of a single neuron to the other side of the SAME neuron), but it's not how signals travel neuron to neuron - that's via neuro-chemicals.

[Alter-Fox]

True. But that still is analogous to packets. Maybe even moreso than electrical impulses would be. Which technically would mean they're more like packets than the packets themselves, and that's great.
Unintentional correctness FTW.

[Pandora]

]Weird. AFAIK all Neurons communicate with eachother via chemical neuro-transmitters across the synaptic cleft, not via electrical impulses. Electrical impulses are how neurons transmit messages across themselves (ie: from one side of a single neuron to the other side of the SAME neuron), but it's not how signals travel neuron to neuron - that's via neuro-chemicals.

exactly.
I also don't get how these impulses - be they chemical or electrical - would be anything akin to packets. Isn't the definition of packet that they contain information: a sequence of bits? the pulses that neurons send are not like that. There is no information hidden in the specific sequence.

[Tunnelcat]

This thing is essentially an analog computer, not a digital one, so it doesn't use binary code.

[Isaac]

lol silly cone brane

silly con kesso

silly con bran Kellogg cereal

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What I really like is how efficient this is over the big blue Ibm computer. It makes me wonder hwo much more effecient this could get.

[Aggressor Prime]

But can it play Crysis?

[Isaac]

With improvement, it might actually be able to play Crysis as a player.

[Alter-Fox]

And be indistinguishable from its human opponents?
Would it be chatty?

Wait... does Crysis even have multiplayer or am I making no sense?

[Isaac]

With more perfection, it could learn to ★■◆● about laggers. And if killed, it could call you a hacker.

[Tunnelcat]

Unless it killed you first.

[Aggressor Prime]

Yes Crysis has a multiplayer, although the original Crysis only has like 1-2 servers up. Crysis Wars is where everyone moved to. It is still pretty active despite the launch of Crysis 2.

[roid]

From what i understand, coz i've been assuming this is the same brain emulation team i've been hearing about months ago, is that OP's chip is specifically designed to run algorithms that are good-enough approximations of neural interconnectivity. Someone got lucky and found that neural activity can be simplified down a lot, or something, it sounded convincing to me when i read it, but i've forgotten most of the specifics.
Also it IS digital afaik. Lets call these chips NPUs (neural processing units).