Why Tissue Computing Will Soon Become Data Processing’s New Normal
For Immediate Release: March 23, 2022
Tissue Computing brings savings in energy and data center floor space. It brings dramatic increases in both data processing speed and throughput. It offers lighting fast data transfers and massive storage capabilities. These benefits all point to one simple conclusion: the transition from digital to tissue computing is inevitable.
For a brief validation of this conclusion, review the Tables which compare a large supercomputer, the TianHe-2, with the forthcoming TOD™ Model 5120. As illustrated, the benefits of the paradigm shift to Tissue Computing are extremely dramatic.
Silicon chips have supported major advances in science and technology, and have changed, and in many ways enhanced our quality of life. But like all great inventions, the time arrives when transition to the next stage of progress occurs. The arrival of Tissue Computing is that next stage, beyond Digital.
The move to live neural processing began to materialize in university research laboratories right around the dawn of the new Millennium and has unwaveringly continued in many academic and private laboratories during the two decades since. The advances in knowledge and the core understanding of neuronal computing activities greatly accelerated over the last three years. This enabled BCM Industries Inc. (BCM) to successfully design a commercially viable Tissue Computer. With the forthcoming release of BCM’s family of Tissue Operating Devices (a range of TOD™ models), which includes Tissue Computing, all of the many benefits of live neuron processing will become commercially available for the entire range of scientific, commercial, government and consumer applications.
To understand these benefits and why Tissue Computing will become the global norm for most, if not all, data processing applications, consider the following five important factors.
Energy – Power Consumption
Energy costs are an important, indeed critical factor in the design and operation of data processing centers and cloud facilities. For large processing services, electric power for the processors and for the required air conditioning represent significant financial and environmental costs.
Sources report the Tianhe-2, one of the world’s powerful supercomputers, requires 17.8 Megawatts of power for operations. It is estimated the human brain, with approximately 100 million neurons, operates on just 10 watts! In other words, supercomputers require 1.7 million times the energy usage of the human brain, and as shown in Table 1, the TOD™ Model 5120 requires only 3.2 kilowatts, 320 times that of the human brain, and many orders of magnitude less than Tianhe-2.
Physical Size – Footprint
A data center, or cloud server facility, requires floor space, for the many racks and cabinets required to operate. The size of the smallest of these structures can easily dwarf a small house, up to a million square feet or more for a major cloud service center. Clearly it would be advantageous to have processors that accomplish the same volumes of processing in much smaller spaces.
As a frame of refence, scientists report a piece of brain matter the size of a grain of sand contains approximately 100,000 neurons. The TOD™ Model 5120 require the space of a typical 2-bedroom apartment, 960 sq. ft. In comparison, the TianHe-2 supercomputer requires 7,750 sq. ft. – a mansion.
Processing Performance – Tasks
Intel and IBM have both created modified computer chips that emulate some of the functions of living neurons. They report that for selective processing applications, they have achieved up to a 1,000 times faster processing speeds.
Although digital chips continue to be made faster and smaller, the laws of physics constraint a chip structure and set an ultimate limit on achievable performance. Current chip designs are approaching those limits. That’s why many computer scientists are saying that Moore’s Law is coming to an existential end-point.
There is also a limit to the ultimate processing speed and storage capacity of a live neuron. However, whatever that unknown limit is, undoubtedly far exceeds the processing limits of any silicon chip.
More importantly, TOD™ processes raw sensor data as an image or an organized set of informational intelligence, not as sets of data consisting of digital (binary) ones and zeros. The TOD™ Tissue Computing method of image-based Flash Processing is NOT possible in the realm of classical digital computing.
Data Transfers – Real-time, Images and Digital
A digital processor has data transfer limits imposed by the physics of the digital silicon chip, plus the need for the data to arrive in an acceptable digital format. In the linkage of multiple motherboards, processors and data center cabinets, data transfers are limited by the capacity of the fibers, cables, wireless or other linkages.
A Tissue Computer does not require sensor or other sourced data to first be converted to digital format before processing can be performed. By avoiding digital data formatting translations, live neural processing saves processing time and the need for digital translation processing equipment.
Living neurons are naturally comfortable accepting raw, real-time, or delayed sensor data in various formats, including optical, audio, video, RF, inferred, thermal, sonic, and seismic. As a result, TOD™ offers superior data transfer performance over classical digital processing.
Although currently there is a design limit to the length of a live neuronal data transfer cord, that limit is sufficient to link one TOD™ data processing cabinet to adjacent cabinets.
Information Management – The Real Analogue World vs. the Simulated Digital World
The classic digital computer industry has developed amazing digital storage devices and systems. But they have inbuilt disadvantages, relative to the new Tissue Computing paradigm, for information storage and retrieval. As mentioned above, large real-time data archiving and access systems require huge floor space and have large power and air conditioning demands. Also, most require the stored data to be in digital data formats.
Digital is great, but as any musical record collector will tell you, the process of digitally representing the actual real-world analogue soundwaves of music means that a great deal of subtle information is lost. A top-of-the-line TV will have many pixels, but the real world isn’t just about pixels. The eyes and brain know that, and see that, but a digital computer cannot, whereas a Tissue Computer can! The real world doesn’t consist only of zeros and ones – but rather, reality consists of many shades of gray, and many, many colors, nuanced sounds, and exquisite subtleties that simply can’t be captured by digitalizing the content.
Tissue Computers will store images, sounds, and various other forms of information (feelings, thoughts, ideas) in natural form – mental form, rather than digitally. Mental format allows a small neuron to accept, archive, and retrieve massive amounts of data, knowledge, and intelligence.
For additional information on Tissue Computing technology, current neuron processing activities, TOD™ design, and related subjects, visit the BCM Industries website or contact BCM.
