National University of Singapore (NUS) and partners unveil world-first biological data centre with 16 million living human neurons

Key facts

• The Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore (NUS Medicine), data-centre operator DayOne and biological computing company Cortical Labs developed the world-first biological data centre prototype.
• The prototype consists of 20 CL1 biological computing units, each containing about 800,000 lab-grown human neurons, for an estimated total of roughly 16 million neurons.
• The biological data centre prototype is established at the NUS Life Sciences Institute and was demonstrated at NUS on August 6.
• The CL1 grows human neurons from stem cells on a silicon-based platform with microelectrode arrays that send electrical signals and record neural activity.
• Cortical Labs' biological intelligence operating system, biOS, allows software to interact with the neural network in real time through an API.
• The CL1's internal life-support system can keep the neural cultures alive for up to six months.
• Cortical Labs describes the approach as Synthetic Biological Intelligence, building on its earlier DishBrain system that used about 800,000 human and mouse neurons to learn to play Pong.
• NUS says biological computing could achieve significantly greater efficiency because biological neural systems can operate using a fraction of the power required by digital computers.
• The project is intended to explore applications including drug discovery, biomedical research, advanced AI, energy optimisation, robotics, cybersecurity and fraud detection.
• The initial validation phase is intended to transition to a live deployment environment within a DayOne commercial data-centre facility in Singapore.
• The underlying research was described in a 2022 paper in Neuron, reporting learning-related changes in neural cultures connected to a simulated Pong environment.