New computer chip mimics human brain

Scientists have produced a new computer chip that mimics the organisation of the brain, and squeezed in one million computational units called "neurons", BBC News reported.

They describe it as a supercomputer the size of a postage stamp.

Each neuron on the chip connects to 256 others, and together they can pick out the key features in a visual scene in real time, using very little power.

The design is the result of a long-running collaboration, led by IBM, and is published in the journal Science.

"The cumulative total is over 200 person-years of work," said Dr Dharmendra Modha, the publication's senior author.

This is partly because programs need to be written from scratch to run on this type of chip, instead of on the traditional style which was
conceived in the 1940s and still powers nearly all modern computers.

That design, where the processors and memory are separate, is a natural match for sequential, mathematical operations.

However, the heavily interconnected structure of biologically-inspired, "neuromorphic" systems like TrueNorth is said to be a much more efficient way of handling a lot of data at the same time.