A new European Commission-funded Pathfinder project HYBRAIN (Hybrid electronic-photonic architectures for brain-inspired computing) aims to deliver a new computing system that is inspired by the human brain.

Coordinated by Professor Wilfred van der Wiel, University of Twente, the project gathers key partners from Oxford, Münster, Pisa and Zürich.

The project will develop a “HYBRAIN system” that is both super-fast, consumes very little energy and can make a real impact on ‘ultra-fast response’ technologies.

Although cloud computing has been considered the best solution to keep the data and computer processing at a distance, it is now increasingly important to move it close to the actual ‘operation’ and start working locally again; this is also called ‘edge computing’.

By doing so, you avoid a delay, ‘latency’, that is too long: despite the upcoming and fast mobile standards like 5G and 6G, the delay can still be too long.

There is a dilemma, though: moving heavy computing power to the local application is undesirable as well.

The classic computer approach involves a lot of data traffic between the processor and memory.

This is, in fact, not how our brain works, where memory and processing are part of the same process.

Within the new HYBRAIN project, the researchers will combine a number of highly innovative solutions, based on how our brain works.

These solutions include ‘in memory computing’ and an evolutionary system that is disordered by itself but can nevertheless detect complex patterns.