It was 1965 when Gordon Moore (co-founder of Intel) made the observation that the number of transistors per square inch of integrated circuits roughly doubled each year, starting from the time of introduction of these devices. What was in 1965 an observation become a law postulating that this trend would not come to a stop. Unfortunately, the limits of physics have caused a recent slowdown in the rhythm at which semiconductor companies can miniaturize transistors. Yesterday, an article on the NYT focused on a fresh announcement by Rice University and HP on a fundamental discovery able to overcome the barrier to the continued miniaturization of electronic components. Read the rest of this entry »
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Shrinking hopes
| August 31, 2010 -
If we could only simulate the fly…
| August 27, 2010
While building mammalian-sized whole brain systems is surely one of the most important research avenues in the new AI wave, with the promise of revolutionize both mobile robotics and more traditional data mining applications, much can be learned from isolating the functional principles encapsulated in small networks of neurons in non-mammalian species. Read the rest of this entry » -
Neuromorphic Systems: Silicon neurons and neural arrays for emulating the nervous system
| August 12, 2010
Neuromorphic engineers are studying the nervous system and trying to emulate its function and organization in their computational and robotics systems. They are hoping to match (or perhaps even exceed) the human brain in vision, hearing, pattern recognition and learning tasks (Boahen 2005). Read the rest of this entry »Comments: 1 Comment -
BCI Trends and Forecasts
| August 9, 2010
During the first week in June, the 4th international BCI Meeting was held outside beautiful Monterey, California. This being my first BCI conference, I was excited to find out what innovations in the field were either in development or already being implemented. The organizers mentioned that the number of meeting participants had grown exponentially since its last gathering five years ago, a trend that mimics the number of BCI publications produced each year. A PubMed search for "brain-computer interface" gave 209 results for 1990-2009, whereas from 2006-2010 the same search yielded 507 results in just four years. Read the rest of this entry »Comments: Leave a commentCategories: Brain-interfaces