Borrowing from biology makes for low -- power computing Read
this aloud and your inner ear, by itself, will be carrying out
at least the equivalent of a billion floating-point operations
per second, about the workload of a typical game console. The
inner ear together with the brain can distinguish sounds that
have intensities ranging over 120 decibels, from the roar of a
jet engine to the rustle of a leaf, and it can pick out one
conversation from among dozens in a crowded room. It is a feat
no artificial system comes close to matching. But what's truly
amazing is the neural system's efficiency. Consuming about 50
watts, that game console throws off enough heat to bake a
cookie, whereas the inner ear uses just 14 microwatts and could
run for 15 years on one AA battery. If engineers could borrow
nature's tricks, maybe they could build faster, better, and
smaller devices that don't literally burn holes in our pockets.
The idea, called neuromorphic engineering, has been around for
20 years, and its first fruits