Lots of problems with the way this is presented in the article. Though the chip is patterned after a naive model of the human brain, the headline assertion is far too bold. Additionally, while the Von Neumann architecture can be characterized as bottlenecked and inefficient, it has also allowed for extremely cheap computing. A processor with all of its memory on the chip would not be inexpensive. Note this article never mentions the cost of the chip nor its memory capacity.
The comparison of this chip's performance with that of a nearby traditionally-chipped laptop is questionable. A couple of paragraphs later it says that the chip is programmed using a simulator that runs on a traditional PC. So I'm guessing the 100x slowdown is because the traditional PC is simulating the neural-net hardware, rather than using optimized software of its own.
Yes, this is important research, but engineer-speak piped through hype journalists will always paint an entirely unrealistic and overoptimistic picture of what's really going on.
Comments
Lots of problems with the way this is presented in the article. Though the chip is patterned after a naive model of the human brain, the headline assertion is far too bold. Additionally, while the Von Neumann architecture can be characterized as bottlenecked and inefficient, it has also allowed for extremely cheap computing. A processor with all of its memory on the chip would not be inexpensive. Note this article never mentions the cost of the chip nor its memory capacity.
The comparison of this chip's performance with that of a nearby traditionally-chipped laptop is questionable. A couple of paragraphs later it says that the chip is programmed using a simulator that runs on a traditional PC. So I'm guessing the 100x slowdown is because the traditional PC is simulating the neural-net hardware, rather than using optimized software of its own.
Yes, this is important research, but engineer-speak piped through hype journalists will always paint an entirely unrealistic and overoptimistic picture of what's really going on.