![]() They are able to do many things that humans are not well suited to do, such as calculating trajectories of rockets or rapidly crunching numbers in large financial spreadsheets. Their versatility, scalability and robustness have been responsible for their “Swiss Army knife” reputation. These micro-scale processing machines, or microprocessors, are used in nearly anything you use that has a computer - a cellphone, a washing machine, a car or a smartwatch. ![]() Millions of such transistors are arranged into centralized, flexible architectures for processing data. More than 13 sextillion (one followed by 21 zeros) devices have been fabricated as of 2018. Today, tiny, nanometer-sized transistors operating as switches inside microchips are the most manufactured device ever. Many years later, with the research of information scientist Claude Shannon, Boolean algebra was used with electrical switches that we now know as transistors, the building blocks of today’s computers. He expressed these laws mathematically, so they could perform arithmetic in a precise, systematic fashion. He imagined the laws of thought as being logical propositions that could take on true (1) or false (0) values. Boolean algebra describes a way to perform precise mathematical calculations with them.īoole’s inspiration came from how he understood the brain to work. His 1847 invention, now known as Boolean algebra, assigns 1 and 0 values to logical propositions (true or false, respectively). Mathematician George Boole’s impact on the modern age is incalculable. How a 19th Century Mathematician Launched the Computing Revolution To understand how we arrived at our approach, we need to take a short tour of computing history. ![]() Interestingly, our view of how the brain works has been a source of constant inspiration to the computing world. While ever-smaller electronic components have exponentially increased the computing power of our devices, those gains are slowing down. You see, energy efficiency has emerged as the predominant factor keeping us from creating even more powerful computer chips. My colleagues and I are looking to the brain as a guide in developing a powerful yet energy-efficient computer circuit design. But it needs a million times more power - 20 megawatts - to pull off this feat. In comparison, one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, the Oak Ridge Frontier, has recently demonstrated exaflop computing. In computing terms, it can perform the equivalent of an exaflop - a billion-billion (1 followed by 18 zeros) mathematical operations per second - with just 20 watts of power. The human brain is an amazingly energy-efficient device.
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