The CAM-Brain Machine (CBM) is a piece of specialized "evolvable hardware" which grows and evolves cellular automata based neural network circuit modules in about a second. This is so fast that from now on it will be practical to build artificial brains by assembling tens of thousands of these quickly evolved modules into humanly architected artificial brains. The modules (evolved one at a time by the CBM) are downloaded into a gigabyte of RAM. The CBM can then update the 3D cellular automata cells in the RAM at a rate of 150 Billion a second, updating an artificial brain consisting of 32000 modules (40 million neurons) at a rate of 300 times a second, fast enough for real time control of our life sized kitten robot "Robokoneko".

The shape and colors of the machine are symbolic. The shape is supposed to represent a slice of cortex, and its colors (grey and white) represent the outer "grey matter" of the cortex (i.e. the neurons) and its inner "white matter" (the interconnecting axons). The electronic boards are placed in the grey section. The power supply is placed in the white section, as shown in the photos below.

If you want to buy one of these machines, contact Dr. Michael Korkin of Genobyte Inc, Boulder, Colorado, USA. We have only enough programmable (and evolvable) chips (Xilinx XC6264) for about 8 machines. So if you want one, you should get your order in quickly, because 3 have already been signed for.

Summary of CBM Technical Specifications:

Cellular Automata Update Rate (max.): 152 billion cells/second.
Cellular Automata Update Rate (min.): 114 billion cells/second.
Number of Supported Cellular Automata Cells (max.): 453 million
Number of Supported Neurons (max., per module): 1,152.
Number of Supported Neural Modules: 32,768.
Number of Supported Neurons (max., per brain): 37,748,736.
Neural Module Chromosome Length: 91,008 bits.
Information Flow Rate, Neuronal Level (max.): 12 Gbytes/s.
Information Flow Rate, Dendrite Level (estimated average): 36 Gbytes/s.
Information Flow Rate, Intermodular Level (max.): 400 Mbytes/s.
Number of FPGAs: 72 (Xilinx XC6264BG560).
Number of FPGA Reconfigurable Function Units: 1,179,648.
Phenotype/Genotype Memory: 1.18 Gbytes.
Power Consumption: 1.5 KWatt (5 V, 300 A).
Computational power (estimated): 10,000 Pentium II 400 MHz computers.

Photos: