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.
PROVOCATIVE: Chinese Deputy Ambassador to the UN Sun Lei accused Japan of sending military vessels to deliberately provoke tensions in the Taiwan Strait China denounced remarks by Japan and the EU about the South China Sea at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, and accused Tokyo of provocative behavior in the Taiwan Strait and planning military expansion. Ayano Kunimitsu, a Japanese vice foreign minister, told the Council meeting on maritime security that Tokyo was seriously concerned about the situation in the East China and South China seas, and reiterated Japan’s opposition to any attempt to change the “status quo” by force, and obstruction of freedom of navigation and overflight. Stavros Lambrinidis, head of the EU delegation to the UN, also highlighted South China Sea
The final batch of 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks purchased from the US arrived at Taipei Port last night and were transported to the Armor Training Command in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), completing the military’s multi-year procurement of 108 of the tanks. Starting at 12:10am today, reporters observed more than a dozen civilian flatbed trailers departing from Taipei Port, each carrying an M1A2T tank covered with black waterproof tarps. Escorted by military vehicles, the convoy traveled via the West Coast Expressway to the Armor Training Command, with police implementing traffic control. The army operates about 1,000 tanks, including CM-11 Brave Tiger
China on Wednesday teased in a video an aircraft carrier that could be its fourth, and the first using nuclear power, while making an allusion to Taiwan and vowing to further build up its islands, as it looks to boost maritime power, secure resources and bolster territorial claims. The video, issued on the eve of the 77th founding anniversary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy, featured fictional officers with names that are homophones of three commissioned aircraft carriers, the Liaoning (遼寧), Shandong (山東) and Fujian (福建). Titled Into the Deep, it showed a 19-year-old named “Hejian” (何劍) joining the group, sparking
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said it expects its 2-nanometer (2nm) chip capacity to grow at a compound annual rate of 70 percent from this year to 2028. The projection comes as five fabs begin volume production of 2-nanometer chips this year — two in Hsinchu and three in Kaohsiung — TSMC senior vice president and deputy cochief operating officer Cliff Hou (侯永清) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Silicon Valley, California, last week. Output in the first year of 2-nanometer production, which began in the fourth quarter of last year, is expected to
RSS