IBM announced the creation of TrueNorth, a chip that’s the size of a postage stamp, yet contains one million neurons.

There are many computer chips out there that enable computers to act like human brains. However, until recently none could inspire significant hope for someday matching its processing power.

IBM has announced the creation of TrueNorth, a chip that’s the size of a postage stamp, yet contains one million neurons.

Each of those neurons can connect to over 250 others, resulting in 256 million programmable synapses.

All that and it only uses up about as much electricity as a hearing aid.

As for potential uses, it’s said it will be a valuable tool in search and rescue missions using robots.

It’s also believed it could power valuable navigation tools for the visually impaired.

That it will be available for such things in the near future is unlikely.

As it’s a completely new system eliminating the binary code, any programs running on it will need to be re-written which has yet to be done.

IBM’s next goal is to create a chip system that packs 10 billion neurons without exceeding the size of a 2-liter bottle.