Building Brains

Computer Technology has advanced spectacularly since the first program was executed by the Manchester 'Baby' machine on June 21 1948, but if this progress is to be sustained there are major challenges ahead in the area of transistor predictability and reliability and in the exploitation of massively-parallel computing resources. Biology has solved both of these problems, but we don't understand how those solutions function at the level of information processing. Two questions arise from this line of thinking: - can massively-parallel computers be used to accelerate our understanding of brain function? - can our growing understanding of brain function point the way to more efficient, fault-tolerant computation? While these questions remain so far unanswered, they suggest a line of investigation that has been recognised under the Grand Challenge of 'Building Brains'. The SpiNNaker project aims to address this challenge through the construction of a massively-parallel computer incorporating over a million ARM processors for the real-time modelling of large-scale systems of spiking neurons.

An interesting session on the above theme is planned at Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference (to be held during 3^rd to 5^th /11/2010).

Key Note Speaker for this will be Mr. Steve Furber, University of Manchester, UK. For additional information visit http://www.biocas2010.org/keynote.html