Commercial applications envisaged fall into two main categories. One, which is where SpiNNcloud is focused, is in providing a more energy efficient and higher performance platform for AI applications – including image and video analysis, speech recognition and the large-language models that power chatbots such as ChatGPT. Another is in "edge computing" applications – where data is processed not in the cloud, but in real time on connected devices, but which operate on power constraints. Autonomous vehicles, robots, cell phones and wearable technology could all benefit. Long regarded as a main stumbling block to the advance of neuromorphic computing generally is developing the software needed for the chips to run.

Research has long strived to develop computers to work as energy efficiently as our brains. A study, led by researchers at the University of Gothenburg, has succeeded for the first time in combining a memory function with a calculation function in the same component. The discovery opens the way for more efficient technologies, everything from mobile phones to self-driving cars. In recent years, computers have been able to tackle advanced cognitive tasks, like language and image recognition or displaying superhuman chess skills, thanks in large part to artificial intelligence (AI). At the same time, the human brain is still unmatched in its ability to perform tasks effectively and energy efficiently.

Since the advent of computing, people have lauded technology's potential to act as a human brain. In truth, computers have worked nothing at all like a brain for most of their history. In recent years, though, they've been getting closer. In a new paper in Nature,"Towards Spike-based Machine Intelligence with Neuromorphic Computing," Priyadarshini Panda and her co-authors Kaushik Roy and Akhilesh Jaiswal, both at Purdue University, provide an overview of the computer's long and ongoing road to achieving something akin to the thinking power of the brain. Panda, assistant professor of electrical engineering, emphasizes that there's still nothing that acts like a brain - not least in part because much of how the brain works is still a mystery.

Scientists have discovered that the brain is 10 times more active than previously thought. In a new study on components of the neurons known as dendrites, researchers found that they are not passive conduits as typically believed, but instead are electrically active in moving animals. Not only could this mean that the brain has over 100 times the computational capacity than it's been believed, but the discovery could also pave the way for the development of'brain-like computers.' The researchers measured dendrites' activity for up to four days in rats that were allowed to move freely within a large maze. They measured activity in the posterior parietal cortex, which plays a key role in movement planning.

IBM and four universities are planning a research project into cognitive computing, which seeks to build computers that operate in a manner closer to the human mind. The goal is to create systems that extend well beyond Watson, IBM's computer that famously competed on the trivia game show Jeopardy and defeated two former champions, IBM said in a news release. The project will be undertaken with Carnegie Mellon University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, IBM said. IBM linked the research with "big data," the term for using computers in new ways to process large volumes of structured and unstructured data in order to make it more accessible and useful. Topics to be explored include how applications can boost group decision making, how processing power and algorithms apply to artificial intelligence, how systems should be designed for more natural interaction and how deep learning impacts automated pattern recognition in science.