A project to replicate the workings of the human brain has received a boost with the delivery of one million ARM processors.
While Intel has its sights set on reaching bumble bee brain level in the near future, it seems its rival is involved in one further.
Scientists at the University of Manchester will link together the ARM chips as the system architecture of a massive computer, dubbed SpiNNaker, or Spiking Neural Network architecture.
Despite the mass of chips it will only be possible to recreate models of up to one percent of the human brain.
The chips have arrived and are past functionality testing.
A similar experiment was once attempted with a load of old Centrino chips found at the back of our stationary cupboard, though so far we haven't even managed to replicate the cranial workings of a particularly slow slug.
The work, headed up by Professor Steve Furber, has the potential to become a revolutionary tool for neuroscientists and psychologists in understanding how our brains work.
SpiNNaker will attempt to replicate the workings of the 100 billion neurons and the 1,000 million connections that are used to create high connectivity in cells.
SpiNNaker will model the electric signals that neurons emit, with each impulse modelled as a ‘packet’ of data, similar to the way that information is transferred over the internet.
The packet is sent to other neurons, represented by small equations solved in real time by ARM processors.
The chips, designed in Machester and built in Taiwan, each contain 18 ARM processors.
The bespoke 18 core chips are able to provide the computing power of a personal computer in a fraction of the space, using just one watt of power.
Now that the chips have arrived it will be possible to get cracking on building model.
“The project revolves around getting the chips made, which has taken the past five years to get right,” Professor Steve Furber told TechEye.
“We will know be increasing the scale of the project over the next 18 months before it reaches its final form, with one million processors used. We already have the system working on a smaller scale, and we are able to look at fifty to sixty thousand neurons currently.”
As well as offering possibilities as a scientific research tool, Furber hopes that the system will help pave the way for computational advancements too.
“It will help to analyse the intermediate levels of the brain, which are very difficult to focus on otherwise,” he says.
“Another area which this help is in building more reliable computing systems. As chip manufacturers continue towards the end of Moore’s Law, transistors will become increasingly unreliable. And computer systems are very susceptible to malfunctioning transistors.”
Furber says biology works differently. “Biology, on the other hand, reacts to the malfunctioning of neurons very well, with it happening regularly with all brains, so this could help future chips become more reliable.”
Of course, we also wanted to know how this all compares with Intel’s famous bumblebee claims.
Unfortunately, professor Furber couldn't specifically help us with information about bumblebee brain processing.
He was, however, able to reel off some details about the honeybee.
“The honeybee brain has around 850,000 neurons so we will be able to reach that level of processing in the next few months. Of course, we don’t have a honeybee brain model to run, but we will have the computing power.”
Over to you, Intel.
Inexact science like robotism, because it lack conscience and consciousness, is forever being used by those who lack conscience to promote/project their stupidity/idiocy. The human brain is not merely of the material, it has the infinite dimension of the spiritual/absoluteness as its superset which gifts it the living. Infinite as in being able to realise what the end of infinity means unlike the unconscionable jokers who are trying one trick after another just to deny the existence of their Morality as they try in vain to fathom what is at the end of the vastness of space? Like crooks and gangsters, when Morality is turned into moralising/a religiosity, it’s every man for himself - first, second and third but never the last, G_d forbid. For starters, how will a komputar ever appreciate music when it does not have a heart and therefore feelings. So, what will the uncionscionables become? As per the norm, they are merely the stupefied brains for The Bookie’s machinations, the brain which sees nothing but I, Me, Mine and don’t The Bookie enjoy their company. When you are in a farway galaxy with nothing living for company, even a lunatic-cum-idiotic is better than nothing.
Science was provisioned to prove the exitence of Divinity and that moment will arrive before The Ending arrives. Many realised souls are clamouring for and taking their rebirths and as that moment approaches, even though many are being caught up by the lure of contemporary frivolities, many are left to complete the task of realising the real Science behind mere science. When the Bookie tosses the dice, do not bet on the outcome. Just witness what He is trying to accomplish and with that act of immunity, your true immunity, which has a spiritual component, will expand your reality as you are freed, bit by bit, from the mesmeric clutches of The Bookie and His Genetics. The brain has Depth/sensibility, which is its spiritual component, in addition to width/sense. Replicating only the unconscionable component will only allow heartlessness to institute into everything cruelty touches, a simplicity which has eluded the Stupid and their Dumb for theirs is to imagine that without them, nothing, oka everything including nonsense, exists. For Imagination, of course, but not for Reality. It cannot get more Simple than that but complexity being under/latent simplicity, unlike Simplicity which is always Complexity at every moment and therefore lacks time or timing, how will the underly simple realise the existence of that which it is blind to? How did any human get to become human? By accident? That’s where The Heart, and not the under or over hearted, in needed.
http://youtu.be/tsZh0Flosdc
drashek trainee'