IBM is trying to solve computing scaling issues with electronic ‘blood’

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/11/5d-electronic-blood-ibms-secret-sauce-for-computers-with-biological-brain-like-efficiency/

by saidajigumi • 11 years ago

71 13 11 years ago

arstechnica.com

hanniabu• 11 years ago

When you think about our brains, this makes a lot of sense and one of those things that seem obvious in hindsight. Our brains are efficient and have high computing power, but why don't they heat up? Because liquid (blood) is constantly flowing through it to keep it cool. But unlike traditional liquid cooled computers, blood also powers our brain.

What I'd like to know, which I don't think they mentioned in the article, is if the fluid actually runs through the chips silicon wafers like the other technique discussed later in the article.

saalweachter• 11 years ago

Our brains also use far less energy than almost any computer but your cell phone.

2500 kilocalories / day = 120 Watts. Your brain is something like a quarter of that, so about 30 Watts for your brain.

KG8• 11 years ago

Depends on the brain. There are people with faster metabolic rates or as one paper detailed some time ago that people with very good eye sight had to paid a higher price in terms of energy spent.

hyperion2010• 11 years ago

This is true, but without the blood to carry excess heat away your brain would still heat up to the point where its cells would no longer be able to function and you would die (only need in increase of about ~3C).

aconz2• 11 years ago

Very cool idea.

One thing I think is often overlooked in comparing brains with computers is that while they may be ahead on efficiency and density, computers win on many other metrics eg. They are easy to reprogram, they don't need sleep, etc.

And I'm curious how exactly brains are measured for operations per unit <blank>

swampthinker• 11 years ago

Perhaps per calorie? But then I wonder how you would define an "operation"

jerf• 11 years ago

"And I'm curious how exactly brains are measured for operations per unit <blank>"

Estimations via a variety of methodologies that all yield different answers. Since brains and computers run such fundamentally different "programs", the details matter less than you might think, because the whole question starts as pretty hopeless in the first place. One approach is "what would it take a modern computer to fully simulate a brain", which is in some sense throwing a huge advantage to the biological brain because the same measure in the opposite direction makes biological brains look really bad, far worse than this measure makes computers look!

Still, while the computations may not be generic, there is certainly a lot of stuff going on in a biological brain, no matter how you look at it. Note the graph is on a log-log scale; differences of opinions will tend to move the biological systems a little bit one way or the other on the graph, it won't tend to suddenly fling it halfway across.

ryanmarsh• 11 years ago

The top comment:

"I look forward to the day I need to do an urgent transfusion between two laptops and need to look up whether someone's Dell has the same bloodtype as my Surface."

snowwrestler• 11 years ago

Imagine a device that can be powered and cooled by the oxygen and blood sugar in human blood. It would permit the creation of embedded medical devices that would be nearly permanent. No need to change battery--just eat more!

shaftoe• 11 years ago

Neal Stephenson covered this in The Diamond Age. People formed a massively parallel computer that performed computations in their blood stream with nanites and shared data between hosts via "fluid transfers."

amatus• 11 years ago

They didn't quite solve the cooling problem though ;)

shostack• 11 years ago

While I like your version more, I can't help but have certain scenes from The Matrix flash into my mind.

mmmBacon• 11 years ago

Very interesting research but they do their SW in Labview?

IBM is trying to solve computing scaling issues with electronic ‘blood’

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