A startup is building computer chips using real neurons

If you have neurons then you also need glia and neurotransmitters and ways to regulate them and keep them alive... and suddenly you need the entire organism.

Re: A startup is building computer chips using real neurons

#5

Post by whoisjuan » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 5:05 AM UTC

What’s the goal of this though? I couldn’t determine it from the article, but I’m certain that using them as transistors just for the sake of saving energy doesn’t make sense. Especially since a neuron size is a about 4000nm or more than 500x larger than the new 7nm transistors.

No way energy consumption is justifiable with such a massive loss of chip real estate. You will need way larger chips to achieve a decent computing power.

Re: A startup is building computer chips using real neurons

#6

Post by monocasa » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 5:17 AM UTC

Pretty weird not to comment that they're replicating published work that trained mouse neurons on an electrode array to fly a plane in a flight simulator.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/041022104658.h...

It's about at the level where you could make a good attempt to replicate it as a hobby in your (albeit well stocked) garage.

Re: A startup is building computer chips using real neurons

#7

Post by haydn3 » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 5:18 AM UTC

whoisjuan wrote: post #5

What’s the goal of this though? I couldn’t determine it from the article, but I’m certain that using them as transistors just for the sake of saving energy doesn’t make sense. Especially since a neuron size is a about 4000nm or more than 500x larger than the new 7nm transistors. No way energy consumption is justifiable with such a massive loss of chip real estate. You will need way larger chips to achieve a decent co…

Maybe it's not just transistors they're hoping to gain from this.

I think it's more like building a brain from organic matter that's the real boon. Sooner or later we'll be discarding silicon and extracting neurons from mice just to watch YouTube IX in space with our Tesla corvette cruisers and our alien barmaids serving us Soylent Green in a martini glass!

Re: A startup is building computer chips using real neurons

#8

Post by dsign » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 5:43 AM UTC

I think that getting any kind of practical processing from biological neurons from a mouse or a human is ... well, hard and pointless.

However, the idea of getting biological parts interfacing with silico has lots of applications. For example, it could be used to build cheaper DNA printers where the "printing heads" are genetically modified bacteria. And from there, it would be possible to arrange all sorts of chemical processes using bacterial metabolism. One could for example build sealed bio-batteries with an infinite lifetime, whose DNA is kept mutation-free using a digital master in the embedded digital controller.

Re: A startup is building computer chips using real neurons

#9

Post by mjfl » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 6:06 AM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #6

Pretty weird not to comment that they're replicating published work that trained mouse neurons on an electrode array to fly a plane in a flight simulator. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/041022104658.h... It's about at the level where you could make a good attempt to replicate it as a hobby in your (albeit well stocked) garage.

why did you link to the science daily and not any actual article? The linked page doesn't even link to an article, it links to a university press release. From 2004 no less. How am I supposed to verify that they are replicating published work as you say?

Re: A startup is building computer chips using real neurons

#10

Post by leoh » Wed, Apr 01, 2020, 6:09 AM UTC

> Using real neurons avoids several other difficulties that software-based neural networks have. For instance, to get artificial neural networks to start learning well, their programmers usually have to engage in a laborious process of manually adjusting the initial coefficients, or weights, that will be applied to each type of data point the network processes.

This seems silly. Once you've figured out these parameters once, it seems to me you can similate a single neuron reasonably well. Perhaps differences will emerge from networks.