Your new post is loading...
The human brain is used as a comparison for how computer's function. But, honestly, computers are nothing like human brains. Not yet, at least.
That could change as researchers have developed computing technology that uses light to mimic the functionality of a nerve's synapse, opening the way for hardware that combines the speed of modern processors with the efficiency of brainpower.
Brains and computers are both systems that can model, manipulate, and store information. From there, they don't tend to have all that much in common.
While processors in computers combine electrical impulses with tiny on-off switches to perform functions, neurons use chemical tides to distribute impulses across multiple channels called synapses.
The difference is significant as far as memory and power consumption go – no hardware can come close to the efficiency and storage capabilities of a human brain.
Not that our grey matter is an all-star performer; those waves of electrolytes and neurotransmitters can't beat the speed of electrons zipping through logic gates.
A team of researchers from Oxford, Münster and Exeter Universities has nailed what it sees as a "holy grail" of computing, creating a photonic integrated circuit that acts like a synapse.
"The development of computers that work more like the human brain has been a holy grail of scientists for decades," says senior researcher Harish Bhaskaran from the University of Oxford.
Via Wildcat2030, Miloš Bajčetić
