Just how powerful is the brain of a mouse? Impressively -- especially when you compare it to your average desktop computer. In fact, your computer at home doesn't even come close to matching the power of half a mouse brain.
Researchers at IBM and the University of Nevada have been using IBM's BlueGene L supercomputer -- which contains 4,096 processors, each using 256MB of RAM -- and succeeded in simulating a small fraction of the power of just half a mouse brain.
"The mouse cortex has roughly 8x106 [8 million] neurons and 8,000 synapses per neuron," said James Frye, Rajagopal Ananthanarayanan and Dharmendra Modha of the University of Nevada.
"Assuming an average firing rate of 1Hz [hertz], the entire memory must be refreshed every second, each neuron must be updated at every simulation time step and each neuron communicates to each of its targets at least once a second," they said.
As the team said in a gloriously deadpan way: "Modeling [sic] at this scale imposes tremendous constraints on computation, communication and memory capacity of any computing platform."
However, even this huge processing effort still only managed to run at a speed 10 times slower than real time, and only for 10 seconds -- the equivalent of one second of mouse-thought. Barely enough time for a mouse to register a hungry cat in the vicinity.
Supercomputers are being used in other, more ambitious projects, including a collaboration between IBM and researchers in Switzerland to simulate the human brain.
The aim is to provide more understanding of human cognition, including perception and memory.
Flowing from this, researchers at France's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne said they might be able to "begin to explain how the brain changed from species to another in evolution."
But their work is just the beginning. They point out that the human brain has up to 100 billion neurons -- compare that to the measly 8 million that the Nevada researchers have managed to simulate and you will have some idea of just how much of a leap in processing power the human brain would require.
Would such a supercomputer develop consciousness?
"We really do not know," the Lausanne researchers said. "If consciousness arises because of some critical mass of interactions, then it may be possible."
That might be useful to know, given that the UK government recently suggested we might have robots as intelligent as humans by 2050. (Are mice intelligent but not conscious? Or vice-versa?)
Of course, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy says that mice are the most intelligent life forms on the planet, "a race of hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings who commissioned the construction of the Earth to find the question to the ultimate answer of life, the universe and everything."
Maybe we should simulate rats instead.
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS