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Living Human Neuron Biological Compute Rack
I've been talking about computer blades in racks using living human neurons for about the last 25 years, and finally they're doing it!
(Biological Computing Rack With Living Human Neurons)
NUS Medicine, data centre operator DayOne, and Melbourne-based Cortical Labs have deployed a 20-unit biological computing rack at the National University of Singapore’s Life Sciences Institute. The system went live July 16 and was formally unveiled Aug. 17 after an Aug. 6 demonstration for more than 80 guests.The installation brings biological computing into a live research environment as Singapore expands data-centre capacity while tightening energy-efficiency requirements. NUS Medicine said the demonstration showed CL1 computing units, microelectrode-array integration, and real-time neural network activity, while The Straits Times reported details of the system’s operation and maintenance...
To keep the living processors viable, the server rack is integrated with an advanced mechanical life-support system that regulates temperature, maintains fluid balance, and delivers nutrients, sustaining the cells for an active six-month lifespan. The ultimate promise of this hybrid technology lies in its incredible energy efficiency: a single CL1 biological unit draws just 30 watts of power—including its life support—compared to upwards of 700 watts for a high-end Nvidia H100 silicon GPU. While not meant to fully replace traditional silicon, it opens a revolutionary, low-power path for specialized tasks like drug discovery, fraud detection, and adaptive robotics.
This looks exactly like the head cheese aka smart gels from Peter Watts' excellent 1999 novel Starfish.
The Pacific Ocean slopped two kilometers under his feet. He had a cargo of blank-eyed psychotics sitting behind him. And the lifter was being piloted by a large pizza with extra cheese...Ray had been in this very cockpit, watching the pizza being installed and no doubt wondering when the term "job security" had become an oxymoron... The techs were playing with a square vanilla box, half a meter on a side and about twice as thick as Kita's wrist.
Humans had always been able to integrate 3-D spatial information better than the machines that kept trying to replace them...
Until now, apparently...
"It's one of those smart gels," Ray said at last... "Head cheese. Cultured brains on a slab. The same things they've been plugging into the Net to firewall infections."
But wait, there's more. In Think Blue, Count Two by Cordwainer Smith, published by Galaxy Publishing in 1962, we find laminated mouse brains being used to pilot space ships!
Finally, though we come to The Cerebral Library by Dr. David H. Keller. He finds five hundred young men and three librarians, and sets them to reading for five years. In a macabre twist, he connects their living brains to form a living networked brain library!
“I brought the books here by the hundreds of thousands, and as they were read I had them burned. They were no longer necessary in my experiment because they had become engraved on the convolutions of the brains of the five hundred readers. “All the time I was working on the electro-dynamic part of the experiment. I had to have fine wire run from each of five hundred glass vessels..."I swing this lever and that starts the delivery of the information which I am asking for. I sit here in my chair and listen to a thousand word essay on the toadstool. If I want to I can take a subject like Anthropology and listen to it for several days. I can take one poem, such as Dante’s Inferno, and have it recited to me.
('The Cerebral Library' by Dr. David H. Keller)"Your surgery made it possible. You took the brains from the five hundred readers and three librarians, and, through your skill, you have made it possible for those brains to remain alive and functioning for many years. You placed them in the five hundred glass jars and arranged for the pumping of the fluid to keep them alive. The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary."
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