

The Pentagon's mad science division is in a hurry to start making brains-on-a-chip. According to DARPA's recently-released budget, the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic

Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) program isn't set to being until the next fiscal year. But the agency is already ramping up preparation for the program, which promises to "develop a brain inspired electronic 'chip' that mimics that function, size, and power consumption of a biological cortex."

DARPA is holding a workshop next month for potential SyNAPSE researchers. And its providing a preview of just how challenging it'll be, to piece together a faux brain.

As compared to biological systems, today's intelligent machines are less efficient by a factor of one million to one billion in real world, complex environments. The key to achieving the vision of the SyNAPSE program will be an unprecedented multidisciplinary approach that coordinates aggressive technology development in the following technical areas: 1) Hardware; 2) Architecture; 3) Simulation; and 4) Environment. Hardware includes neuromorphic electronics with novel, high density, plastic, synaptic components; Architecture includes neuromorphic design from microcircuits to complete system; Simulation includes large-scale digital simulation of neuromorphic circuits and functional neuromorphic systems; and Environment includes virtual training, testing and benchmarking for neuromorphic systems.

So you better get going, brain-builders.