The SpiNNaker supercomputer
The SpiNNaker supercomputer is an advanced piece of hardware that can compute over 200 million actions per second. It has 100 million semiconductor chips that are strategically placed to perform their best.
This neuromorphic computer works in a similar way as the human brain does and was activated on November 2nd.
It took about £15 million in funding, 20 years to conceive the idea and over 10 years to build the supercomputer, with initial work starting in 2006. EPSRC funded the project, but now the European Human Brain Project supports it.
The School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester designed and built this high-performing machine that simulates the real-time operation of more biological neurons than any other machine on the planet. There are different kinds of cells in your brain and the most important one is a basic cell. Cells communicate by releasing bursts of electrochemical activity Neuromorphic computers are computer systems with electronic circuits that mimic these “bursts.”
“SpiNNaker rethinks the way conventional computers work from the start. In essence, we built a machine that works more like a brain than a traditional computer.” Steve Furber stated, the professor of computer science who came up with the original idea. “The ultimate goal for the project has always been a million cores in a computer for real-time brain model applications, and now we’ve achieved that, which is fantastic.”
In the long term, computer scientists aim to one day create a computer that can simulate up to a billion biological neurons in real time.
This computer can help understand how the human brain works.
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Author: PC-GR
The World of Technology
