As Moore’s law ends, brain-like computers begin

Stanford News


March 13, 2017As Moore’s law nears its physical limits, a new generation of brain-like computers comes of age in a Stanford lab Conventional computer chips aren’t up to the challenges posed by next-generation autonomous drones and medical implants. Now, Kwabena Boahen has laid out a way forward, using ideas built in to our brains.





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By Nathan Collins

For five decades, Moore’s law held up pretty well: Roughly every two years, the number of transistors one could fit on a chip doubled, all while costs steadily declined. Today, however, transistors and other electronic components are so small they’re beginning to bump up against fundamental physical limits on their size. Moore’s law has reached its end, and it’s going to take something different to meet the need for computing that is ever faster, cheaper and more efficient.
Professor Kwabena Boahen has written “A Neuromorph’s Prospectus” outlining how to build computers that directly mimic in silicon what the brain does in flesh and blood. (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

As it happens, Kwabena Boahen, a professor of bioengineering and of electrical engineering, has a pretty good idea what that something more is: brain-like, or neuromorphic, computers that are vastly more efficient than the conventional digital computers we’ve grown accustomed to.
This is not a vision of the future, Boahen said. As he lays out in the latest issue of Computing in Science and Engineering, the future is now.
“We’ve gotten to the point where we need to do something different,” said Boahen, who is also a member of Stanford Bio-X and the Stanford Neurosciences Institute. “Our lab’s three decades of experience has put us in a position where we can do something different, something competitive.”
30 years in the making
It’s a moment Boahen has been working toward his entire adult ...


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