Turning pings into packets: Why the future of computers looks a lot like your brain

The neurones and synapses of the human brain are serving as the inspiration for the next-generation of processor hardware. If you were looking for a model of the next wave of computing hardware, you could do worse than turn to the human brain: it's small, energy efficient, and has been functionality unmatched by any other machine you'd care to name. Given the performance of the human brain is still orders of magnitude ahead of the most powerful supercomputer in existence, yet it requires orders of magnitude less space to house it and energy to run it, researchers believe technology that mimics the human brain -- known as neuromorphic computing -- could be the future of computing. Despite its name, the aim of neuromorphic computing is not simply to model the workings of human grey matter (though researchers are indeed using it for that). Instead, neuromorphic computing is using the human brain as the inspiration for a new wave of low-energy, high-power hardware that could end up in everything from supercomputers to smartphones.