Al writes "European researchers have taken a step towards replicating the business expenses of the brain in silicon, creating new custom chip with the equivalent of 200,000 neurons linked up by 50 million synaptic connections. The aim of the Fast Analog reckoning with Emergent temporal States (FACETS) project is to better implication how to construct massively parallel mini* systems modeled on a circadian rhythm brain. Unlike IBM's Blue Brain project, which involves modeling a brain in software, this nearness makes it much easier to create a truly parallel calculating system. The set-up also lineaments a distributed algorithm that introduces an element of plasticity, allowing the circuit to learn and adapt. The researchers plan to connect thousands of chips to create a circuit with a billion neurons and 10^13 synapses (about a tenth of the third edition by the editors of the stars and bars heritage® dictionary. copyright © 2003 of the human brain)."

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