I'm sure you're quite right and the IEEE link makes oodles of sense, but for people examining notions of creativity in computational intelligence (for example), the idea of these chips is quite attractive.
In fact, I remember programming ANNs in horribly non-distributed C paradigms, and even PureData objects trying to come up with non-garbage computer music in the 90's and thinking we needed precisely the kind of chip they're trying to engineer.
This, and the advent of HTMs and other non-ANN ways of going about it, mean that chips that handle distributed processing for applications that model human creativity (which is necessarily about concurrent time-based activities), are a -good- thing no matter what the degree of success, IMHO.
I've been looking at HiWave (formerly NXT) in Cambridge (UK) to let me use their HIHX14C exciters for tablet touch panels, in order to let give my users the effect of depressing mechanical keys when touching the panel surface. I hope to combine this with the fact that these exciters can be used essentially as drivers to conduct sound through the panel, so I can turn the whole tablet into a speaker. You can see the parts here: http://bit.ly/nc16KY
Not that I expect my target audience (people fighting attention deficit in dementia or in childhood) to type for hours every day, but I wonder if this might be a way to improve the experience and accuracy of typing on the whole: haptic/sonic feedback...
In fact, I remember programming ANNs in horribly non-distributed C paradigms, and even PureData objects trying to come up with non-garbage computer music in the 90's and thinking we needed precisely the kind of chip they're trying to engineer.
This, and the advent of HTMs and other non-ANN ways of going about it, mean that chips that handle distributed processing for applications that model human creativity (which is necessarily about concurrent time-based activities), are a -good- thing no matter what the degree of success, IMHO.