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Home Industry News New brain-inspired microchip promises medical technology revolution

New brain-inspired microchip promises medical technology revolution

29th April 2014

Future medical technology designs and research initiatives could be aided by the creation of a new form of microchip based on the human brain.

Developed by a team at Stanford University, the Neurogrid circuit boards are 9,000 times faster and use significantly less power than a typical PC. They consist of 16 custom-designed Neurocore chips, simulating one million neurons and billions of synaptic connections.

Roughly comparable in size to an iPad, it is 100,000 times more energy-efficient than a personal computer simulation of the same number of neurons. Scientists believe it can be used not only to study the functions of the brain, but could also power intelligent prosthetic limbs in future.

However, further research needs to be done to bring down its cost and energy consumption further, while boosting its power. In time, they hope to match the human brain, which offers 80,000 times more neurons than Neurogrid while consuming only three times as much power.

Kwabena Boahen, associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford, said: "Achieving this level of energy efficiency, while offering greater configurability and scale, is the ultimate challenge neuromorphic engineers face."

The brain is estimated to contain around 100 billion nerve cells, forming a million new connections every second, so emulating its performance using computers remains a distant target.ADNFCR-8000103-ID-801716131-ADNFCR

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