عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Varieties

First Human Supercomputer in 2024

An undated image of the human brain taken through scanning technology. Reuters.
An undated image of the human brain taken through scanning technology. Reuters.
TT
TT

First Human Supercomputer in 2024

An undated image of the human brain taken through scanning technology. Reuters.
An undated image of the human brain taken through scanning technology. Reuters.

Using just 20 watts of power, the human brain is capable of processing the equivalent of an exaflop — or a billion-billion mathematical operations per second. Now, researchers in Australia are building what will be the world's first supercomputer that can simulate networks at this scale. The supercomputer, known as DeepSouth, is being developed by Western Sydney University.

When it goes online next year, it will be capable of 228 trillion synaptic operations per second, which rivals the estimated rate of operations in the human brain. The hope is to better understand how brains can use such little power to process huge amounts of information. If researchers can work this out, they could someday create a cyborg brain vastly more powerful than our own. The work could also revolutionize our understanding of how our brains work.

"Progress in our understanding of how brains compute using neurons is hampered by our inability to simulate brain-like networks at scale," said André van Schaik, a director at Western Sydney University's International Centre for Neuromorphic Systems.

"Simulating spiking neural networks on standard computers using Graphics Processing Units and multicore Central Processing Units is just too slow and power intensive," he added. "Our system will change that," he was quoted as saying by Science Alert and Business Insider.

Ralph Etienne-Cummings at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, who is not involved in the work, told New Scientist that DeepSouth will be a game changer for the study of neuroscience. "If you are trying to understand the brain this will be the hardware to do it on," he said.

Etienne-Cummings noted that there will be two main types of researchers who will be interested in the technology — those studying neuroscience, and those who want to prototype new engineering solutions in the AI space.

DeepSouth is just one of many research projects aiming to create a machine that will rival the human brain. Other researchers are trying to tackle the same problem by creating "biological computers" powered by actual brain cells.

Most Viewed

 
 
Varieties

1st Car Made during Soviet-era in Poland Goes on Display 73 Years Later

This Warszawa M-20 car with serial number 000001, based on a Soviet Union's model, was the first vehicle to leave a car factory in Poland after World War II, on Nov. 6, 1951 and now, 73 years later, it goes on public display at a private museum in Otrebusy, central Poland, on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
This Warszawa M-20 car with serial number 000001, based on a Soviet Union's model, was the first vehicle to leave a car factory in Poland after World War II, on Nov. 6, 1951 and now, 73 years later, it goes on public display at a private museum in Otrebusy, central Poland, on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
TT
TT

1st Car Made during Soviet-era in Poland Goes on Display 73 Years Later

This Warszawa M-20 car with serial number 000001, based on a Soviet Union's model, was the first vehicle to leave a car factory in Poland after World War II, on Nov. 6, 1951 and now, 73 years later, it goes on public display at a private museum in Otrebusy, central Poland, on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
This Warszawa M-20 car with serial number 000001, based on a Soviet Union's model, was the first vehicle to leave a car factory in Poland after World War II, on Nov. 6, 1951 and now, 73 years later, it goes on public display at a private museum in Otrebusy, central Poland, on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

The very first car produced in Soviet-era Poland after World War II went on display Friday near Warsaw after it was tracked down in Finland during decades of searching and acquired after years of negotiations.

The chunky 1951 Warszawa M-20 bears the serial number 000001 it had when it left the FSO Passenger Car Factory in Warsaw on Nov. 6 of that year, exactly 73 years ago. It is a relic of the period of Poland’s post-war subordination to communist-ruled Soviet Union.

“We are extremely proud because now we count among the very few people in the world who have retrieved the very first vehicles of the series made in their countries,” said Zbigniew Mikiciuk, a co-founder of the private museum in Otrebusy.

The car was first given to the Soviet army marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, who served as Poland’s defense minister after the war to seal the country’s dependency to Moscow. It eventually was discovered in the possession of the family of Finnish rally car driver Rauno Aaltonen, though the car's history in between remains unclear, Mikiciuk said.
It took more than two years of negotiations to obtain the vehicle from the Finnish owners, The Associated Press quoted him as saying.

The car's original light color has been painted over with a shade of brown that was fashionable in the 1970s and bears marks of once-intensive use that the museum has preserved to keep it authentic, but it is still "holding together” and is “cool” despite its age, Mikiciuk said.
The now-defunct FSO factory intensively sought the original model during the 1970s in hopes of using it to mark an anniversary. The company even offered a new car in exchange for it, at a time when cars were still a luxury in Poland, but to no avail.
The FSO factory was originally built in the late 1940s to make Italian Fiat 508 and 1100 cars, but Soviet leaders in Moscow objected to the ties with a Western company during the Cold War. They ordered production to be based on the Soviet Union's Pobeda (Victory) cars, with Moscow providing the technology and the production lines.
The car now joins the museum’s many historic vehicles, including a 1928 US-made Oakland brought to Poland before the war by a doctor’s family and a 1953 Buick that belonged to Poland’s communist-era Prime Minister Jozef Cyrankiewicz. The former leader brought the car to Poland via the Netherlands apparently to avoid a direct connection to the US during the Cold War.
The museum also displays a Volvo that was used by Poland’s communist leader, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, known for having imposed martial law in 1981.
“We have been doing this for more than 50 years and we are not collecting cars you can see in the street but cars that have their history, their soul and their legend,” Mikiciuk said.
The museum owners hope that by displaying the initial Warszawa M-20 they can encourage members of the public to come forward and fill in more details of its history.