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A grisly detail about a new data center powered by human neurons: technicians have to constantly replenish the brainy computers’ cerebrospinal fluid.
“We remove the fluid every 24 hours,” Hong Weng Chong, CEO and founder of Cortical Labs, told The Register.
Biological computers, evidently, come with biological limitations. The hundreds of thousands of brain cells that power each of the Australian biotech startup’s “CL1” machines deplete the oxygen and glucose in the liquid, Chong explained. And so, at the start of every day, an employee tops up the biological sludge to keep everything ticking along.
Some operational details sound more like they come from a greenhouse than a data center. Chong described how technicians carefully manage the mixture of gases that shroud the computers. The company adds nitrogen and carbon dioxide so that the atmosphere is made of five percent oxygen — a quarter of what occurs naturally on Earth — which is apparently the optimal level for computerized neurons to work in.
Cortical Labs first made made its way into the limelight in 2022 after researchers said they’d taught neurons in a petri dish how to play the classic barebones video game Pong.
The CL1, which the company claims is the “world’s first code deployable biological computer,” blows that out of the water. Using its upwards of 200,000 living neurons, they recently demonstrated that it could play the classic 1993 shooter Doom, a feat that’s several magnitudes greater in complexity, requiring the computer to navigate and explore a 3D environment, control multiple game mechanics, and deal with enemies.
Though it remains highly experimental, Cortical Labs touts one key advantage over traditional computing: a far smaller energy draw. To Bloomberg, Chong claimed that each CL1 unit needs less power than a handheld calculator, further predicting that they will one day be faster than traditional computers, too.
The jury’s out on how capable or practical these machines will end up, however. The Doom stunt is compelling and amusing, but it’s still a stunt. And the setup requires quite a bit of, well, setup. It takes the company around a week to prepare its machines for each job, according to The Register, which require specific cells based on a customer’s needs, and a corresponding tailored physical environment.
Nonetheless, Cortical Labs is already working on scaling up operations, teaming up with another outfit to build new data center facilities in Melbourne and Singapore, with the latter set to house up to 1,000 CL1 units. It’s also launched a cloud computing service, per The Register. The service runs on a stack of 120 CL1 units that customers can pay for API access to, through which they can run code.
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