The Chinese news outlet XinhuaNet reported on Saturday that Chinese engineers unveiled what they call a brain-like computer, dubbed Darwin Monkey, that they say can mimic the workings of a monkey’s brain.
Developed by the national key lab of brain intelligence at Zhejiang University in east China’s Zhejiang Province, the computer is equipped with 960 Darwin 3 chips, the third-generation brain-like neural processing units developed by the lab.
The resarchers said the chip array supports more than 2 billion pulsed neurons and over 100 billion synapses, “making Darwin Monkey the world’s first brain-like computer to combine advanced thinking abilities with vision, hearing, language and learning functions.”
The system, also called Wukong, consumes approximately 2,000 watts of power under typical operating conditions.
The research team has deployed several intelligent applications on the computer, XinhuaNet stated.
“It can run the DeepSeek brain-like large (AI) model to perform tasks such as logical reasoning, content generation and mathematical problem-solving,” the outlet reported. “Leveraging its powerful neuronal and synaptic resources, the system can also preliminarily simulate animal brains of varying neuron sizes, including those of elegans, zebrafish, mice and macaques, offering new possibilities for brain science research.”
