IBM's 'Rodent Brain' Chip Could Make Our Phones Hyper-Smart

Dharmendra Modha walks me to the front of the room so I can see it up close. About the size of a bathroom medicine cabinet, it rests on a table against the wall, and thanks to the translucent plastic on the outside, I can see the computer chips and the circuit boards and the multi-colored lights on the inside. It looks like a prop from a '70s sci-fi movie, but Modha describes it differently. "You're looking at a small rodent," he says. He means the brain of a small rodent--or, at least, the digital equivalent. The chips on the inside are designed to behave like neurons--the basic building blocks of biological brains.