Science built a Silicon brain

So what is this new chip all about?

Keeping in mind that the chip FACETS has designed is never intended to be commercially produced in any capacity, as a proof of concept and a design achievement it's quite astounding. A human brain is one of the most complex computing structures that we know of, containing an average of 85 billion neurons packed into the space inside a skull.

While the silicon chip (we'll call it SilBrain, for want of another) doesn't have anywhere near this many at 200,000 neurons, the structure is incredibly similar. Each neuron is linked to the other by 50 million synaptic links, or junctions through which neurons use to communicate their signals. Even though they're usually small enough percentage-wise inside our brains, since the FACETS team worked inside a small wafer of silicon they actually take up the vast majority of space.

Even though SilBrain has 250 times less neurons than a human brain, it is able to run at a speed significantly faster - burning through an entire day's worth of equivalent 'real' time in only a single second!

Just one junction of neurons in the human brain