Goals[]

The FACETS project aims at conceiving paradigms of computation that depart significantly from the Turing concept of contemporary IT systems and make use of the complex and ongoing dynamics seen in brain activity. Paradigms of computation will be studied, where the complexity is the determining part of the computational process rather than being something to be avoided. In particular, one goal is to show how diverse computational architectures can emerge from the dynamic succession of transient states of activity distributed across the network and constrained by the intrinsic connectivity.

Layout Drawing of an Analog
Spiking Neural Network ASIC
(Electronic Vision(s) Group, Heidelberg)

To this end, the FACETS project works towards laying a theoretical and experimental foundation for the practical realisation of novel computing hardware, which exploits the concepts experimentally observed in the brain. Such hardware systems will be beneficial for a broad range of experiments ranging from tests of neuroscience models to experimental studies of novel concepts in information processing which exploit the complex dynamics, the diversity of computing elements and the plasticity of the biological example.

Please visit also the other links in this section to learn more about

• the different Lines of Research followed
• and the novel Neural Hardware developed

within the FACETS project.