DARPA

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has posted a new Broad Agency Announcement (BAA), soliciting “innovative research proposals in the area of Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE).” Proposals are due May 22, 2008.
“Over six decades, modern electronics has evolved through a series of major developments (e.g., transistors, integrated circuits, memories, microprocessors) leading to the programmable electronic machines that are ubiquitous today. Owing both to limitations in hardware and architecture, these machines are of limited utility in complex, real-world environments, which demand an intelligence that has not yet been captured in an algorithmic-computational paradigm. As compared to biological systems for example, today’s programmable machines are less efficient by a factor of one million to one billion in complex, real-world environments. The SyNAPSE program seeks to break the programmable machine paradigm and define a new path forward for creating useful, intelligent machines. ”

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