A startup is building computer chips using real neurons

Re:A startup is building computer chips using real neurons by whoisjuan on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @01:05AM (#22745877)

What’s the goal of this though? I couldn’t determine it from the article, but I’m certain that using them as transistors just for the sake of saving energy doesn’t make sense. Especially since a neuron size is a about 4000nm or more than 500x larger than the new 7nm transistors.

No way energy consumption is justifiable with such a massive loss of chip real estate. You will need way larger chips to achieve a decent computing power.

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Re:A startup is building computer chips using real neurons by haydn3 on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @01:18AM (#22745926)

Maybe it's not just transistors they're hoping to gain from this.

I think it's more like building a brain from organic matter that's the real boon. Sooner or later we'll be discarding silicon and extracting neurons from mice just to watch YouTube IX in space with our Tesla corvette cruisers and our alien barmaids serving us Soylent Green in a martini glass!

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Re:A startup is building computer chips using real neurons by mimentum on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @03:52AM (#22746634)

Well considering, many humans solved complex problems for thousands of years, with just the human brain for power, at about 20W of power consumption. One could argue that the human brain, or nature is more efficient at processing than that of a computer of equal power.

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Re:A startup is building computer chips using real neurons by russdill on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @12:27PM (#22750489)

The best thing that could come out of this is a better understanding of how neurons work, especially across different organism. But yes, for building actual things it wouldn't scale. Silicon is a far better way forward and we have a ton of room for optimization.

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