Blue Brain
Simulation of the human brain has been predicted by my favorite future prophet Ray Kurzweil to come at around 2010. While he has been on the spot with other predictions (like eye implants etc) there was no sign that anyone would attempt to use a huge mainframe computer for brain simulation just yet. This has changed. IBM together with a swiss research team is attempting to simulate 10.000 neurons. Officially they hope to find a cure to Alzheimer or other brain diseases but you canīt overlook the fact that this is a project aimed to simulate the human brain and have artificial intelligence. They will simulate this on a 22,8 Terraflop BlueGene IBM supercomputer. The team hopes to have one part of the brain functioning by 2008 - when there is more processing power available. So a fully functioning brain by 2010-2012 like Kurzweil predicted in his book "Age of the spiritual machines" might not be out of the question after all. Lets see how they fare with this experiment.