A neuromorphic supercomputer called DeepSouth will be capable of 228 trillion synaptic operations per second, which is on par with the estimated number of operations in the human brain
Edit: updated link, no paywall
A better title would be “Supercomputer that could conceivably simulate entire human brain, based on a rough estimate of what it would take to do that if we had any idea how to do that, will switch on in 2024”.
For real. I’m reading the title all wondering how the fuck they mapped all the neuron connections and… nope, the real innovative part of the story is clickbait
That’s only counting connections. The brain learns by making new connections, through complex location and timing dependent inputs from other neurons. It’s way more complex than the number of connections, and if neuroscientists are still studying the building blocks we don’t have much hope of recreating it.
This also ignores that the brain is not wholly an electrical system. The are all kinds of chemical receptors within the brain that alter all kinds of neurological function. Kid of the reason why drugs are a thing. On small scales we have a pretty good idea how these work, at least for the receptors that we’re aware of. On larger scales it’s mostly guessing at this point. The brain has a knack of doing more than the sum of all parts on a pretty regular basis.
Four grad students out there hand-entering NXML rows while squinting at AI enhanced SEM images should be able to get all 228T done by… next quarter, right?
This is setting aside that bus capacity is the bottleneck vs. compute power and they have yet to demonstrate bus performance of a full 228T connections/second with implicit timing which, to my knowledge, has never been demonstrated in a system a tiny fraction of this size. Though that’s not to say it’s impossible, but while this machine is incredibly powerful the comparison to human brains is predictably inaccurate…
Relevant XKCD
In seven and half million years it will print “42” to its terminal
What if we just type in 42 and let it think about that for seven and half million years?
“What do you get if you multiply six by nine?”
- the derived question, theoretically
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (book 2 of the 5-part trilogy)
I HAVE a human brain and I’m not too smart. It just sounds like we’re making a dumb supercomputer
To be fair, simulating the brain of a person from the deep south isn’t that hard. I can already do that with a 9v battery and a block of cheddar.
Look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power.
Not too long ago it would take a room like that to mimic a fraction of the power in my watch. Heck, I’ve got more power on my wrist than it took to get to the moon.
It’s a BangleJS. So, not super powerful, but I can program it myself and it has gps, gyro, Bluetooth, and two weeks of battery (assuming I’m not using that stuff constantly.)
To be fair our brain took millions of years of evolution, while this simulated brain took only a few years to be developed, maybe in the future this can all fit in a phone perhaps. Enough for this simulated brain to watch memes of beans from this era.
