From: Dani Eder (danielravennest@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Jan 22 2006 - 04:57:44 MST
My simple story for potential investors:
The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each with
10,000
synapses firing at an average of 100 Hz, for a total
synapse
firing rate of 100 x 10^15/sec.
A modern CPU chip (Athlon 64 X2 4800+, 2.4 GHz) has
two cores
each processing an average of 1.5 calculations/cycle x
64 bits.
This gives a bit rate of 460 x 10^9.
There is some question about how much data a synapse
firing
equates to, but assume 1 bit/synapse firing for now.
Thus
it would take 217,000 of these CPU chips to equate to
a human
brain.
The most powerful computer in the world (Blue Gene-L)
has
40% fewer CPU chips, and they are each 39% as powerful
as the
Athlon above, for a total of about 1/4 of the required
power.
So the failure of AI to date can be explained by the
lack of
adequate hardware.
Special purpose AI accelerator chips, similar to
graphics
accelerator ships, may buy you a factor of
10 improvement. Clever programming may buy you
another
factor of 10, and the expected improvement in
computers
in the next 5 years will get you another factor of 5.
This would bring the number of blade servers required
down
to ~430, which is a reasonably small number. So an
investment
in accelerator chip design and AI programming, coupled
with
the expected improvement in computers overall, could
yield
true AI in 5 years.
DRN (I've previously signed my messages 'Daniel', but
Daniel Radetsky signs his messages the same way. To
avoid confusion I'm now using the initials of my
historical
re-enactment persona 'Daniel of Raven's Nest', which
is
where my email address comes from. Dani Eder is my
real
world name)
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