Various processors and pieces of code are often compared to brains, but neuromorphic chips work to much more directly mimic neurological systems through the use of computational “neurons” that communicate with one another. Intel’s first-generation Loihi chip, introduced in 2017, has around 128,000 of those digital neurons. Over the ensuing four years, Loihi has been packed into increasingly large systems, learned to touch and even been taught to smell.

Now, it’s getting a new family member: Loihi 2. In its press release, Intel said that years of testing with the first-generation Loihi chip helped them to design a second generation with up to ten times the processing speed; up to 15 times greater resource density; and up to a million computational neurons per chip – more than seven times those in the first generation. Intel reports that early tests have shown that Loihi 2 required more than 60 times fewer ops per inference when running deep neural networks as compared to Loihi 1 (without a loss in accuracy).

Intel Unveils Loihi 2, Its Second-Generation Neuromorphic Chip, HPCWire