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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow3941

[...] The team of researchers have devised a way to factor large composite integers by harnessing the massive parallelism of novel computer architectures that mimic the functioning of the mammalian brain. So called neuromorphic computers operate under vastly different principles than conventional computers, such as laptops and mobile devices, all based on an architecture described by John von Neumann in 1945.

In the von Neumann architecture, memory is separate from the central processing unit, or CPU, which must read and write to memory over a bus. This bus has a limited bandwidth, and much of the time, the CPU is waiting to access memory, often referred to as the von Neumann bottleneck.

Neuromorphic computers, on the other hand, do not suffer from a von Neumann bottleneck. There is no CPU, memory, or bus. Instead, they incorporate many individual computation units, much like neurons in the brain.

These units are connected by physical or simulated pathways for passing data around, analogous to synaptic connections between neurons. Many neuromorphic devices operate based on the physical response properties of the underlying material, such as graphene lasers or magnetic tunnel junctions. Because of this, these devices consume orders of magnitude less energy than their von Neumann counterparts and can operate on a molecular time scale. As such, any algorithm capable of running on these devices stands to benefit from their capabilities.

Source: Brain-like computers moving closer to cracking codes

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