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BOB HIRSHON (host):
Brain-like computer chips. I’m Bob Hirshon and this is Science Update.
When you look at a busy intersection, your brain identifies and tracks cars, buses, bikes and pedestrians all moving simultaneously in different directions. It’s a task that would be difficult for a massive supercomputer drawing kilowatts of power, but your brain does it using less energy than a dim lightbulb. Now IBM engineer Dharmendra Modha and his colleagues report in the journal Science on a new computer chip called True North that mimics the brain’s array of neurons, giving it massive computational power, but requiring very little energy.
DHARMENDRA MODHA (IBM):
The chip is literally a supercomputer the size of a postage stamp, weight of a feather, and power consumption of a hearing aid battery.
HIRSHON:
Modha says the chips could give computing devices the ability to sense, react to and even learn from events around them. I’m Bob Hirshon, for AAAS, the science society.