UK Researchers Come Up With World's Largest Human Brain-Like Supercomputer

Guwahati: To cope up with the pacing world, researchers of The University of Manchester have designed and built the million-processor-core Spiking Neural Network Architecture (SpiNNaker) machine. The world's largest brain-like supercomputer has been designed to work in the same way as the human brain has been switched on for the first time.

As per sources, the newly formed machine is capable of completing more than 200 million actions per second, with each of its chips having 100 million transistors.

Researchers have aimed to model up to a billion biological neurons in real time and are now a step closer. To give an idea of scale, a mouse brain consists of around 100 million neurons and the human brain is 1,000 times bigger than that.

It may be noted here that, to reach this point it has taken 15 million in funding, 20 years in conception and over 10 years in construction, with the initial build starting way back in 2006, according to a statement.

SpiNNaker is unique because, unlike traditional computers, it does not communicate by sending large amounts of information from point A to B via a standard network. Instead, it mimics the massively parallel communication architecture of the brain, sending billions of small amounts of information simultaneously to thousands of different destinations.

As per sources, biological neurons are basic brain cells present in the nervous system that communicate primarily by emitting ‘spikes’ of pure electro-chemical energy. Neuromorphic computing uses large-scale computer systems containing electronic circuits to mimic these spikes in a machine.

“SpiNNaker completely re-thinks the way conventional computers work. We’ve essentially created a machine that works more like a brain than a traditional computer, which is extremely exciting,” said Steve Furber, who conceived the initial idea for such a computer.

“The ultimate objective for the project has always been a million cores in a single computer for real-time brain modeling applications, and we have now achieved it, which is fantastic,” Furber added.

It needs to be mentioned here that, one of the fundamental uses for the supercomputer is to help neuroscientists understand how our own brain works. It does this by running extremely large scale real-time simulations which simply aren’t possible on other machines.

For instance, SpiNNaker has been used to simulate high-level real-time processing in a range of isolated brain networks. This includes an 80,000 neuron model of a segment of the cortex, the outer layer of the brain that receives and processes information from the senses.

It may also be added that the power of SpiNNaker has even recently been harnessed to control a robot, the SpOmnibot. This robot uses the SpiNNaker system to interpret real-time visual information and navigate certain objects while ignoring others.

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