Science built a Silicon brain

What is it made up of?

The SilBrain (as we've endearingly called it) is just like any other modern processor from the past twenty years in terms of physical construction. Made up of a substrate consisting of a silicon base, the most vital components are located here.

It takes up an entire eight-inch silicon wafer, which contains the communication and control units, as well as Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (or ASIC) chip. This allows the entire construct, known as a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) to function in hardware and mimic the massively parallel functions inside the human brain.

Underneath this computing and communication layer of the NPU is the Neural Network Wafer, and the cooling/support block that appears to be watercooled.

Image courtesy of FACETS Project, Ruprecht-Karls Universität Heidelberg