World's largest-scale brain-like computer with 2 billion neurons unveiled

Chinese engineers at Zhejiang University and Zhejiang Lab have unveiled "Darwin Monkey," the world’s largest-scale brain-like neuromorphic computer, designed to mimic the macaque monkey brain. The system integrates 960 third-generation Darwin 3 neuromorphic computing chips across 15 blade-style servers, supporting over 2 billion spiking neurons and more than 100 billion synapses. This neuron count approaches that of a macaque brain, enabling advanced cognitive functions such as vision, hearing, language, learning, logical reasoning, content generation, and mathematical problem-solving. The Darwin 3 chips feature specialized brain-inspired instruction sets and an online neuromorphic learning mechanism, marking a significant technological breakthrough in brain-inspired computing and operating systems. Consuming approximately 2,000 watts during typical operation, Darwin Monkey represents the first neuromorphic brain-like computer based on dedicated neuromorphic chips. The system can run large brain-like models such as DeepSeek, demonstrating its capacity for complex intelligent applications. This development follows similar