Chinese researchers have unveiled Darwin Monkey (Wukong), the world’s largest brain-inspired supercomputer. Its architecture is based on the macaque brain: the system contains more than 2 billion artificial neurons and 100 billion synapses — figures comparable to the brain of a live monkey.
Darwin Monkey was created at Zhejiang University with support from the government and Alibaba Group. It is built on 960 Darwin III chips, each of which includes 2.35 million neurons. The entire system consumes only 2,000 watts of power, making it highly energy efficient.
The supercomputer has already demonstrated its practical value: it can reason, generate text, and solve tasks, as well as model animal brains. This opens prospects in neuroscience and makes it possible to avoid experiments on live animals.
Darwin Monkey is a continuation of the Darwin Mouse project (2020) and has overtaken its nearest competitor — Intel’s American Hala Point. Its creation is seen as an important step toward the development of artificial general intelligence and new ways of studying the brain.
