NATURE: Artificial neurons compute faster than the human brain

Description

Another issue is that the synapses can only operate at temperatures close to absolute zero, and need to be cooled with liquid helium. Steven Furber, a computer engineer at University of Manchester, UK, who studies neuromorphic computing, says that this might make the chips impractical for use in small devices, although a large data centre might be able to maintain them. But Schneider says that cooling the devices requires much less energy than operating a conventional electronic system with an equivalent amount of computing power.