An early announcement by WIRED (February 12, 2008) of the imminent SyNAPSE program sponsored y DARPA.

The Pentagon’s mad science division is in a hurry to start making brains-on-a-chip. According to DARPA’s recently-released budget, the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) program isn’t set to being until the next fiscal year. But the agency is already ramping up preparation for the program, which promises to “develop a brain inspired electronic ‘chip’ that mimics that function, size, and power consumption of a biological cortex.”
DARPA is holding a workshop next month for potential SyNAPSE researchers. And its providing a preview of just how challenging it’ll be, to piece together a faux brain. The whole article is available here.