Computers Looking for a Successor
Human Brain Project breaking new ground
Jülich, 20 September 2011 – Leading European scientists are currently preparing the Human Brain Project, which is intended to link research on the functional principles of the brain with possible applications in information science.
A competent network of research and development centres is to be established throughout Europe in order to record and store neurobiological data, perform simulations on supercomputers, and develop mathematical theories and fundamentally new hardware architectures. In the ongoing BrainScaleS project, which provides the scientific and technical foundations for this endeavour, about 200,000 electronic neurons are linked to 50 million learning synapses on a silicon wafer. Their development over time can be simulated 10,000 times faster with this electronic model than with its biological prototype.