The neural structure of the sea slug Aplysia has been widely studied (first by Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel) because it has only about 20,000 neurons, most of them large and easily manipulated. Assuming that the cycle time for an Aplysia neuron is roughly the same as for a human neuron, how does the computational power, in terms of memory updates per second, compare with the high-end computer described in Figure 1.3?

Figure 1.3

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Supercomputer Personal Computer Human Brain 1011 neurons 1011 neurons synapses Computational units | 104 CPUS, 1012 transistors 1014 bits RAM 1015 bits disk 4 CPUS, 10° transistors 1011 bits RAM 1013 bits disk Storage units Cycle time Operations/sec Memory updates/sec 1014 1014 10-9 sec 1015 sec 10-9 1010 1010 sec 10-3 1017 1014