New Hardware Needed For Future Computational Brain 143
schliz writes "Salk Institute director Terrence Sejnowski has called for more power-efficient, parallel computing architecture to support future robots that could keep up with the human brain. While human brains had 100 billion neurons and required only 20 Watts of energy, today's most powerful supercomputer, the 2.57 PFlop Chinese Tianhe-1A, requires four megawatts, and still has trouble with vision, motion, and 'common sense,' he said."
Apples and oranges... (Score:5, Informative)
That most powerful supercomputer, I'd assume, has not been tuned to actually work like a brain would.
This is like an emulator. A lot of computational power is probably wasted on trying to translate biological functions into binary procedures. I think if they truly want to compare, they'll need to create an environment that is enhanced for the tasks we want it to process.
Nobody expects the human brain to compute integer and floating point stuff at the same efficiency either, right?
Re:Efficiency is the key! (Score:4, Informative)
The author talks about the honeybee. Let's emulate first the honeybee. Create a robot that can achieve what the social insect "bee" can achieve.
Lobules Lobes Whole Brain