Brains and Machines

Can the Nvidia Monopoly on AI Chips Be Broken?

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 13:42:19 +0000

In this latest episode of Brains and Machines, EE Times Senior Reporter Sally Ward-Foxton talks to Dr. Sunny Bains of the University College London. They discuss the importance of power in all AI systems, the benefit of having dedicated inference chips, and where neuromorphic fits into the market. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Neuromorphic Spikes Unify Control and Decision Making

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 13:38:30 +0000

In this latest episode of Brains and Machines, Professor Rodolphe Sepulchre, a control theorist from the University of Cambridge, talks to Dr. Sunny Bains of the University College London. They discuss the inspiration he took from studying biological neurons, why both discrete and continuous behaviors are inherent to how they work, and why building neurons is often easier than simulating them. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Green Always-On Sensing With Neuronova’s Sub-μwatt Chip?

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 10:25:48 +0000

Neuronova is an analog neuromorphic startup based in Milan, Italy. In this episode of Brains and Machines, the CEO and CTO talk to Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London about their inference processor that idles at less than 10 nanowatts and what they hope to do with it. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

An Architecture for Building Brains from Top to Bottom?

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 09:20:43 +0000

Professor Chris Eliasmith is a computer scientist and philosopher who’s been modelling cognitive systems for almost three decades. In this episode of Brains and Machines, he talks to Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London about his neural engineering framework and the semantic pointer architecture his team have developed to implement it. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Artificial Hearing: From Ear Drums to Tuning Forks

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 08:52:10 +0000

Dr. Claudia Lenk’s group creates brain-inspired hearing systems with micromechanical hair cells. In this episode of Brains and Machines, she talks to Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London about the advantages of the approach and how it could be applied to speech processing in AI. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

A Theoretical Framework for Neuromorphic Technology?

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 11:26:40 +0000

Sunny talks to Dr Brad Aimone from Sandia National Laboratories who works with the world’s biggest neuromorphic platforms. He explains how this allows him to think deeply about what such platforms are good for and how we might be able to get to a theory of neuromorphic computational power. After the interview, discussion follows with Giulia and Ralph.

Neurons Close the Loop from Insect Perception to Action

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 11:18:22 +0000

Sunny talks to Prof Barbara Webb from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, who uses physical robots to validate neural mechanisms in crickets, ants, and bees. She talks about her work inspired by the philosophy that biological cognition can only be truly understood by building complete sensory-motor loops that work in the real world. After the interview, discussion follows with Giulia and Ralph.

Can Neuromorphic Be Low-Power, Reconfigurable, and Scalable?

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 15:38:57 +0000

Professor Gert Cauwenberghs has been working toward building brain-scale systems for decades. At the University of California San Diego, he’s now one of the leaders of the Neuromorphic Commons hub, also known as Thor, which will give the wider community access to neuromorphic hardware and simulators. In this episode of Brains and Machines, he talks to Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London about his approach to making systems that use minimal energy, are highly interconnected at all levels, and are surprisingly flexible. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Event-Driven E-Skins Protect Both Robots and Humans

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 08:07:40 +0000

Professor Gordon Cheng builds humanoid robots that can feel their environment using artificial skin. In this episode of Brains and Machines, he talks to Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London about how the skin was designed, how it improves safety, and why neuromorphic engineering will be important for machine autonomy. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Digital Prototypes May Enable Analog Neuromorphic Chips

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 23:06:11 +0000

Dr. Charlotte Frenkel from the Technical University of Delft set records with a low-power neuromorphic chip she designed as part of her Ph.D. In this episode of Brains and Machines, she talks to Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London about what she has learned about building simplicity into chips and integrity into benchmarks. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

IBM Used Mathematics as Compass on Journey to NorthPole

Sat, 07 Jun 2025 08:11:04 +0000

Dharmendra Modha’s TrueNorth chip added the word neuromorphic to the technorati lexicon back in 2014. In this episode of Brains and Machines, he talks to Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London about how that project led to his work on NorthPole and the axiomatic approach he took to design. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Rippling Signals May Provide Working Memory in the Brain

Mon, 05 May 2025 06:53:57 +0000

For 50 years Dr. Terry Sejnowski has modelled the brain and used his insights to help inform AI. In this episode of Brains and Machines, he talks to Dr. Sunny Bains of the University College London about how information flows both ways between neuroscience and engineered intelligence, proposes a new way of looking at memory and considers the Hopfield-Hinton Nobel Prize. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Making Analog Chip Designs Without Analog Designers

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 10:01:16 +0000

Dr. Jennifer Hasler of Georgia Tech is best known for her work with field programmable analog arrays (FPAAs). In this episode of Brains and Machines, she talks about the importance of, and progress in, analog electronics for AI with Dr. Sunny Bains of the University College London. Discussion follows with Dr .Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

BrainChip’s IP for Targeting AI Applications at the Edge

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 14:46:04 +0000

Tony Lewis, CTO for BrainChip, and four other key scientists talk to Sunny Bains of the University College London. They discuss their business strategy, their temporal event-based neural network (TENN), and the next iteration of the Akida chip. Discussion follows with Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Robots Need Physical, Not Just Artificial, Intelligence

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 08:32:42 +0000

In this episode of Brains and Machines, emeritus Professor Rodney Brooks of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, currently CTO of Robust AI, talks about bottom-up and top-down approaches to robotics and AI with Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Embracing the Efficiency of the Neuromorphic Hairball

Sun, 05 Jan 2025 16:31:04 +0000

In this new episode of Brains and Machines, Dr. Katie Schuman of the University of Tennessee explains the advantages of evolutionary approaches in neural processing to Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Chip Combines Analog and Digital Neurons for Sensor Data

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 19:45:34 +0000

In this episode of Brains and Machines, UCL’s Sunny Bains talks to four key figures at Innatera, a spin out from the University of Delft in the Netherlands: Dr Petrut Bogdan, Neuromorphic Architect; Dr Amir Zjajo, Chief Scientific Officer; Vasile Toma, Vice President for Engineering; and Dr Sumeet Kumar, Chief Executive Officer. They are hoping that their latest spiking neural network chip will become AI of choice for people working on sensor applications. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo Marie Curie Fellow at The Czech Technical University in Prague, and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Carver Mead Says Neuromorphic Efficiency Can Help AI

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 14:36:13 +0000

In this episode of Brains and Machines, UCL’s Sunny Bains talks parallelism, neural net efficiency and risk taking with Caltech’s Prof. Carver Mead. Now an emeritus professor, Mead has been instrumental in the development of chip design, and was one of the first employees of Noyce and Moore, which later became Intel. He’s also one of the founders of the field of neuromorphic engineering. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo Marie Curie Fellow at The Czech Technical University in Prague, and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Next-Gen Neuromorphic Researchers Look to Future

Fri, 31 May 2024 18:24:19 +0000

In this special episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, Dr. Sunny Bains and Dr. Giulia D’Angelo talk to four early career researchers: Dr. Kenneth Stewart, a computer scientist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC; Dr. Laura Kriener, a postdoctoral researcher at The University of Bern in Switzerland; Jens Pedersen, a Ph.D. student at The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden; and Dr. Fabrizio Ottati, an AI/ML computer architect at NXP Semiconductors in Hamburg, Germany. They discuss learning rules for spiking neural networks, primitives for computations on neuromorphic hardware, and the benefits and drawbacks of neuromorphic engineering.

SynSense Research Head Talks Combined Sensing, Processing

Fri, 17 May 2024 18:23:05 +0000

In this episode of Brains and Machines, Dr. Sunny Bains talks to Dr. Dylan Muir, the head of research at SynSense. They discuss the company’s products, including Speck, Xylo, and Rockpool, some of the design choices that were made to bring these to market, and their recent acquisition of sister company IniVation. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague, and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Half-Human–Scale SpiNNaker 2 Machine on Cloud in 2024

Fri, 03 May 2024 18:21:27 +0000

In this episode of Brains and Machines, Dr. Sunny Bains talks with Professor Christian Mayr from the Technical University of Dresden, who worked on SpiNNaker with Steve Furber for many years. He is taking that project into the future with SpiNNaker 2, which is mostly built, SpiNNaker 3, which is his next design project, and the startup SpiNNcloud. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo Marie Curie Fellow at The Czech Technical University in Prague, and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Bio-Inspired Networks to Interface With Nervous System

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 18:19:59 +0000

In this episode of Brains and Machines, Dr. Elisa Donati of the Institute of Neuroinformatics in Zurich talks to Dr. Sunny Bains about neuromorphic circuits for prosthetics, drug delivery, and more. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague, and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Choosing the Right Technologies for Hybrid AI Chips

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 18:16:15 +0000

In this episode of Brains and Machines, Dr. Sunny Bains discusses neuromorphic chips with Dr. Amirreza Yousefzadeh, who most recently worked at imec and the University of Twente. He has a broad background in electronics, starting with digital and then moving into neuromorphic, and he’s spent time both in industry and research. This sets him up neatly to work on hybrid AI SoCs. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Fortiss research institute in Munich, and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Why Sound Processing Takes Time, Not Just Frequency

Fri, 15 Mar 2024 19:15:06 +0000

In this episode of Brains and Machines, Professor Shih-Chii Liu, co-director of the Sensors Group at the Institute of Neuroinformatics (INI)—part of both the ETH and the University of Zurich, Switzerland—talks to Brains and Machines host, Dr. Sunny Bains, about neuromorphic cochlea, sparsity and deep networks, and what it will take for the technology to solve real problems in industry. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague, and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Algorithms Help Spiking Neural Networks Learn to Learn

Fri, 16 Feb 2024 19:12:58 +0000

In this episode of Brains and Machines, Professor Emre Neftci, director of the Neuromorphic Software Ecosystems group at the Peter Grünberg Institute (PGI), talks to Brains and Machines host, Dr. Sunny Bains. He and his PGI colleagues, part of the Jülich Research Centre in Germany, think about how neurons can be trained and organized to learn in an efficient and brain-inspired way. You’ll hear about his work in making backpropagation compatible with spiking neural networks, dealing with device variability, and one- and few-shot learning.

Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Fortiss research institute in Munich, and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Giving the Humanoid iCub Embodied, Neuromorphic Vision

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 19:11:18 +0000

Dr. Chiara Bartolozzi, head of the event-driven perception for the robotics group at the Italian Institute for Technology (IIT) in Genoa, develops analog sub-threshold circuits to make bio-inspired brains for robots. Her group focuses on exploiting information from event-driven vision and tactile sensors for cognitive tasks, and she works extensively with iCub: a research platform in the form of a robot child, developed in Italy and used throughout Europe.

In this episode of Brains and Machines, you’ll hear her talk to Dr. Sunny Bains about how neuromorphic technology can be used to implement attention mechanisms, the importance of embodiment, and why we need a solid theory of how neural systems can work together to create intelligence.

Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague, and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

Tobi Delbrück Talks Caltech, Cameras, and Neural Control

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 19:09:20 +0000

In this episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, Sunny Bains talks to Dr. Tobi Delbrück, one of the original neuromorphic engineers from Carver Mead’s team at Caltech. Now a professor at the Institute of Neuroinformatics in Zurich, he has spent his career developing neuromorphic cameras and other technology. In this interview, you’ll find out how he got started in the field, his work developing the dynamic vision sensor (also known as an event camera) and the pros and cons of sparse representations.

Ferroelectric Memristors and Exotic Materials to Drive AI

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 19:07:35 +0000

In this episode of Brains and Machines, Sunny Bains gets deep into nanoscale ferroelectrics with Professor Beatriz Noheda, director of the Groningen Cognitive Systems and Materials Center (CogniGron). They discuss how this unusual interdisciplinary research center works, why nanoscale ferroelectrics may be useful in brain-like systems, and a little about how they are designed and fabricated.

Perceiving Touch With Event-Based Neuromorphic Computing

Fri, 15 Dec 2023 19:05:49 +0000

In this episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Italian Institute of Technology interviews her IIT colleague, Dr. Simeon Bamford, who is currently working on tactile neuromorphic sensors. They talk about creating circuits to perform functions lost to brain damage, Bamford’s involvement with the commercialization of dynamic vision sensors, and his latest research on robotic touch. Discussion follows with Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London, and Prof. Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

How Memristors Will Help Machines Think at Different Timescales

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 19:04:23 +0000

In the latest episode of Brains and Machines, EE Times regular Dr. Sunny Bains talks to Professor Melika Payvand, who designs neural systems from the circuit-level up at the Institute of Neuroinformatics in Zurich. You’ll find out the role that memristors are playing in the systems she designs, why neural circuits need to operate at different timescales, and why copying some features of biological dendrites could add computational power to silicon brains. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

ARM Inventor Steve Furber on SpiNNaker 1, 2 and Beyond

Fri, 17 Nov 2023 19:02:40 +0000

In this latest episode of Brains and Machines, Dr. Sunny Bains interviews now-Emeritus Professor Steve Furber as he prepares to leave the University of Manchester. They talk about associative memories, the original SpiNNaker neural simulator designed using densely-interconnected ARM cores, and the new generation of the technology currently being assembled. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

How to See ‘Where’ Through Low-Power Event Cameras

Fri, 27 Oct 2023 18:00:59 +0000

In this episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, Dr. Giulia D’Angelo, from the Czech Technical University in Prague, talks to Professor Guillermo Gallego, from the Technical University of Berlin. They discuss the application of the new generation of bio-inspired, event-driven cameras and their algorithms to extract cues of motion, depth and optical flow estimation. After that, Giulia discusses the interview with Dr. Sunny Bains from the University College London and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

Seeing Robotics and Machine Vision as Dynamical Systems

Fri, 13 Oct 2023 17:58:54 +0000

In this episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, Sunny Bains talks to Dr Yulia Sandamirskaya, who has just created the Neuromorphic Computing Group at Zurich University of Applied Sciences. We discuss the role that dynamical systems theory plays in robotics, her work with Intel’s Loihi platform, and what she plans to do in her new position at ZHAW, particularly related to vision. After that, Sunny discusses the interview with Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

Building Brain-Like Systems from Sub-Threshold Electronics

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 17:54:35 +0000

In this episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, EE Times regular Sunny Bains talks to Professor Giacomo Indiveri, from the Institute of Neuroinformatics in Zurich. They talk about building biologically-plausible neural circuits in silicon, the trade-offs involved in using analog and digital circuits, and how the technology has been translated into startups. After that, Sunny discusses the interview with Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

Understanding Real Brains with Robotic Rats, and Vice Versa

Mon, 25 Sep 2023 17:52:00 +0000

In this episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, Sunny Bains talks to Dr Mitra Hartmann, Professor of both Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University, and head of their sensory and neural engineering group. They discuss the ways in which modelling animal perceptual systems—in her case, the rat—can make us better at both understanding the brain and building technology. After that, Sunny discusses the interview with Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

On-Chip Learning is Missing Neuromorphic Building Block

Mon, 11 Sep 2023 17:49:08 +0000

In this episode of Brains and Machines, Sunny Bains interviews Elisabetta Chicca, head of the bio-inspired Circuits and Systems research group at the University of Groningen, about building neural chips with memristors, adding electronic brains to neural robots, some of the current difficulties with learning algorithms for spiking systems and more. Discussion follows with Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

André van Schaik Discusses New Neuromorphic Simulator

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 17:43:44 +0000

In this first episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, Sunny Bains interviews André van Schaik from the Western Sydney University about how neuromorphic engineering has changed since the early 90s, a new project to help simulate neural and neuromorphic models, and more. Discussion follows with Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.