[ExI] cool! locals create circuit board modeled on the human brain

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace
Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2014 8:35 AM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] cool! locals create circuit board modeled on the human brain

 

I read where the human brain is firing at a rate of four quadrillion time a second.  Of course we don't want a computer to do all that our brain is doing but still.......

 

 

 

 

Indeed.  We want the computer to do far more than our brain is doing.

 

Consider the above calculation.  We have about 1E11 brain cells (I think that is the standard estimate, do correct me if I err.)  If the above calculation of 4E15 is correct, then the average brain cell would need to fire 4E4 times per second.  The standard estimate I have heard is a typical brain cell fires at about 200 Hz, for a 2E13 rate.

 

BillW, have you a source please on your 4E15 number?

 

Compare to a typical microprocessor.  We have about a billion transistors (processor gurus, is this number approximately up to date?) so about a quarter of a billion gates, operating at about 4 billion Hz.  If they all switched every cycle that would be about 1E18 “firings” (ignore for the moment the term may or may not be applicable.)  If I go into task manager, I see that about 1% of the CPU is busy as a rough estimate.  So perhaps 1E16, or I would be OK with your 4E15, give back another factor of 2.

 

So the computer makes that specification, but the brain is a factor of 200 short?

 

Over to you BillW.

 

spike

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