Researchers from Stanford University in California have developed a new circuit board modeled on the human brain. Neurogrid is a circuit board consisting of 16 custom-designed “Neurocore” chips. Together these 16 chips can simulate 1 million neurons and billions of synaptic connections. The team designed these chips with power efficiency in mind. Their strategy was to enable certain synapses to share hardware circuits. The result was Neurogrid, which is a device about the size of an iPad that can simulate orders of magnitude more neurons and synapses than other brain mimics on the power it takes to run a tablet computer. Now the researchers are ready for next steps, which will include lowering costs and creating compiler software that would enable engineers and computer scientists with no knowledge of neuroscience to solve problems using Neurogrid.
Source: Stanford University
