‘Brain-like’ AI uses Chinese chips to run 100 times faster on ultra-long tasks

A Chinese team has unveiled what it calls the world’s first “brain-like” large language model – an artificial intelligence system designed to use less energy, perform better and operate without Nvidia chips.

Developed by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Automation in Beijing, SpikingBrain 1.0 mimics how the human brain fires only the neurons it needs.

So instead of activating an entire network like ChatGPT and other mainstream AI tools, it selectively responds to input, saving power and speeding up response time.

Thanks to this design, the model can learn from just a sliver of training data – less than 2 per cent of the amount conventional systems need – while staying fast and efficient even when processing long text.

In some cases, it ran up to 100 times faster than traditional models, according to a non-peer reviewed technical paper posted on arXiv, an open-access research repository.

The system runs entirely on China’s homegrown AI ecosystem, powered by the MetaX chip platform rather than Nvidia’s dominant GPU hardware. That makes the model strategically important as the US tightens export controls on advanced AI chips.

  

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