[infurl]

https://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/devices/memristor-first-single-device-to-act-like-a-neuron

One thing that’s kept engineers from copying the brain’s power efficiency and quirky computational skill is the lack of an electronic device that can, all on its own, act like a neuron. It would take a special kind of device to do that, one whose behavior is more complex than any yet created.

Suhas Kumar of Hewlett Packard Laboratories, R. Stanley Williams now at Texas A&M, and the late Stanford student Ziwen Wang have invented a device that meets those requirements. On its own, using a simple DC voltage as the input, the device outputs not just simple spikes, as some other devices can manage, but the whole array of neural activity—bursts of spikes, self-sustained oscillations, and other stuff that goes on in your brain.

This one took a lot of effort to achieve and there is still a lot of work to do to make a device that can be used on a large scale, but it sure does seem like a step in the right direction.

[HS]

This is so cool. Genius approach. But how could the necessary temperature control be achieved for a brain's worth of these? Interesting if you could have an analogue PID type feedback loop. This might be a good avenue of investigation. Reliable, simple, power efficient...