New microchips mimic human nerves to boost speed and cut power waste

Scientists at Germany’s Ilmenau University of Technology are developing a new generation of ultra-fast, energy-efficient microchips inspired by the human brain’s nerve signaling. Their neuroNODE project focuses on superconducting electronic components that process information using short electrical pulses, mimicking how signals travel along human nerve pathways. Unlike traditional silicon chips that consume power continuously, these pulse-based circuits only use energy when processing signals, potentially halving the energy consumption needed for the same computing power. This innovation aims to address the rapidly growing global energy demands driven by data traffic from smartphones, cloud services, streaming, and AI applications. The project is particularly timely given the soaring electricity consumption of modern IT infrastructure, with AI training alone, such as for ChatGPT-4, requiring tens of millions of kilowatt-hours. Traditional chips’ constant power draw, even when idle, is becoming a critical bottleneck. By leveraging quantum effects in superconducting circuits—concepts originally proposed by John von Neumann—the researchers hope to create components that