Special blend of circuits and memristive devices created for brain-mimicking processing systems

During the 1990s, Carver Mead and colleagues combined basic research in neuroscience with elegant analog circuit design in electronic engineering. This pioneering work on neuromorphic electronic circuits inspired researchers in Germany and Switzerland to explore the possibility of reproducing the physics of real neural circuits by using the physics of silicon. The field of brain-mimicking  neuromorphic electronics shows great potential not only for basic research but also for commercial exploitation of always-on edge computing and internet of things applications. In Applied Physics Letters Elisabetta Chicca, from Bielefeld University, and Giacomo Indiveri, from the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, present their work to understand how neural processing systems in biology carry out computation, as well as a recipe to reproduce these computing principles in mixed signal analog/digital electronics and novel materials.