X-Message-Number: 26896 From: Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2005 08:13:27 EDT Subject: Re: CryoNet #26882 To Donaldson T. Donaldson said: Any attempt to imitate a whole working brain must deal with the speed of processing of which it is or isn't capable. We can certainly produce very slow simulations of networks of neurons; and these would certainly be interesting as objects to study just how our brain's neurons work. However they would be useless as devices able to act like real brains in the real world, precisely because of the problem of TIMING. In short, your comments forget or (deliberately?) omit the problem of TIMING, which for any true imitation of a brain must match. OK, so, you accept now that a sequential processor is equivalent to a multiprocessor in the range of problem that it can work out. The difference being that the multiprocessor is faster. So we agree on that with yet one precision : A (good) multiprocessor is faster than a single one * at equal technology*. Today single processors are faster than multiprocessors 25 years ago for example. About the brain, the minimum clock time is on the order of the millisecond, the comming pseudomorphic HEMT technology (used for TVsats reception) will bring processor clocking in the then of GHz range, ten millions times faster that a neuron. That may reduce the requested parallel processing... Yvan Bozzonetti. Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=26896