Timeline

18 moments that made neuromorphic computing what it is. Each one is a publication, a first or a decision that can be looked up.

1. 1907Louis Lapicque proposes a model of how a nerve adds up its input — the root of the integrate-and-fire neuron.
2. 1943Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts publish a logical model of the neuron.
3. 1949Donald Hebb proposes that connections between neurons that fire together grow stronger.
4. 1952Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley publish their equations for the nerve impulse.
5. 1958Frank Rosenblatt describes the perceptron.
6. 1971Leon Chua predicts the memristor from circuit theory.
7. 1977John Backus names the “von Neumann bottleneck” in his Turing Award lecture.
8. 1989Carver Mead publishes Analog VLSI and Neural Systems.
9. 1990Mead’s paper “Neuromorphic Electronic Systems” gives the field its name.
10. 1991Misha Mahowald and Carver Mead describe the silicon retina in Scientific American; the first chip had been published in 1988.
11. 1997Markram and colleagues demonstrate that spike timing governs synaptic change.
12. 2008A team at HP Labs reports a physical memristor; the full paper on the dynamic vision sensor, first shown in 2006, appears.
13. 2013The European Human Brain Project begins, with SpiNNaker and BrainScaleS as its neuromorphic platforms.
14. 2014IBM publishes TrueNorth; Stanford publishes Neurogrid.
15. 2017Intel announces the Loihi research chip.
16. 2018The million-core SpiNNaker machine is switched on in Manchester.
17. 2021Intel announces Loihi 2.
18. 2024Hala Point, a system of 1.15 billion neurons, is installed at Sandia National Laboratories.