"Scientists and engineers at IBM’s Almaden Research Center, in San Jose, Calif., announced today at the Supercomputing Conference (SC09) in Portland, Ore., that they have created the largest brain simulation to date on a supercomputer. The number of neurons and synapses in the simulation exceed those in a cat’s brain; previous simulations have reached only the level of mouse and rat brains. Experts predict that the simulation will have profound effects in two arenas: It will lead to a better understanding of how the brain’s architecture leads to cognition, and it should inspire the design of electronics that mimic the brain’s as-yet-unmatched ability to do complex computation and learn using a small volume of hardware that consumes little power." - xero from Bookmarklet

"A major problem is power consumption. Dawn is one of the most powerful and power-efficient supercomputers in the world, but it takes 500 seconds for it to simulate 5 seconds of brain activity, and it consumes 1.4 MW. Extrapolating from today’s technology trends, IBM projects that the 2019 human-scale simulation, running in real time, would require a dedicated nuclear power plant." - xero

Words can be so deceiving. "Simulating the brain" those are big words. What algorithms are they using and how do they weigh the information/data flow? There is a lot of speculation and a lot of decisions to be made before running such a simulation. Game theory alone won't get them very far. “Each neuron in the network is a faithful reproduction of what we now know about neurons” ... there -again- is the element in this I don't trust. But still very exciting stuff, of course. - Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic