New IBM microchip to 'rival' the human brain

IBM has developed silicon microchips that it says mimic how the brain works and "rewire" themselves in response to new information.
The technology has been hailed as a move towards "cognitive computing", allowing machines to perform human-like functions such as recognition and learning.

"Imagine traffic lights that can integrate sights, sounds and smells and flag unsafe intersections before disaster happens or imagine cognitive co-processors that turn servers, laptops, tablets, and phones into machines that can interact better with their environments,” said Dharmendra Modha, the leader of the SyNAPSE project, a collaboration with American universities that has so far received $20m in funding from DARPA, the Pentagon's technology research arm. http://www.telegraph.co.uk