Building Brains

Carver Mead introduced the concept of neuromorphic, or brain-inspired, computing in the 1980s, drawing an analogy between the equations that govern the flow of electrons in a transistor operating in its sub-threshold region and those that govern the flow of ions in the ion channels in a neuron. Since then the field has diversified to include a range of analogue and digital approaches, and novel device technologies, that in some way take inspiration from the brain to explore alternative models of computation to those employed in mainstream computing.

The SpiNNaker project at the University of Manchester, UK, is currently the world’s largest neuromorphic computing platform, incorporating over a million ARM processor cores connected through a novel communications fabric developed to support the very high degree of connectivity found between neurons in the brain. SpiNNaker was developed primarily to support real-time models of brain regions with the objective of contributing to the scientific Grand Challenge of understanding the principles of operation of the brain as an information processing system. It is openly available to researchers around the world under the auspices of the EU Flagship Human Brain Project.