Used inside a properly designed chip, this technology could lead to computers that think and learn like a human.

The human brain can process huge amounts of information very quickly, and on a tiny power budget of just 20 W. Unfortunately, even the latest and greatest supercomputers are playing catch-up in both respects, as they suffer from architecture-driven bottlenecks that limit data processing speed and require on the order of a million times more power to run brain simulations in slow motion.

These limitations are intrinsic to the way today's computers are built and so, if we want to build a machine that thinks and learns like a human, we might need to rethink the way such a machine would work. Neuromorphic computing, a new discipline that uses electronics to mimic the biology of the brain, could be the the answer.