Valve’s CEO, Gabe Newell, is expected to release a new brain chip through his startup, Starfish Neuroscience. The first batch of brain chips is expected to arrive in late 2025.
The company, incorporated in 2019, published its first blog post about the new brain chip, positioning itself as a new competitor to Elon Musk’s Neuralink.
Starfish stated that the custom electrophysiology chip will interact with multiple brain regions simultaneously. This means that the chip will read and write to connected parts of the brain, making it possible to help people with neurological disorders.
Starfish is making a miniaturized brain chip
Most existing brain chips are fairly bulky. Each side usually measures more than 5 mm (about the width of two stacked pennies) and may reach 10 mm or more per side. In addition, such chips consume a high power of 10s of milliwatts (mW).
Starfish stated that the upcoming brain chip will be miniaturized, making it much smaller than expected. The chip will have physically small dimensions of 2 x 4 millimeter (mm) and a 0.3 mm-pitch Ball Grid Array (BGA) package. A BGA is simply a type of chip carrier used for integrated circuits (ICs).
In terms of power consumption, the chip will operate at an ultra-low power range. During normal recording of brain spikes, the chip will consume a total of 1.1 milliwatts (mW). This is equivalent to powering a single LED or a low-power temperature sensor.
By having a tiny chip that consumes ultra-low power, Starfish aims to reduce the surgical impact of brain implants.
Other features include recording neural spikes and local field potentials (LFPs), which are the slower, smoother voltage fluctuations in the brain. Moreover, the chip will stimulate the brain by sending tiny electric pulses that go positive and then negative, known as biphasic pulses.
The chip will also include 32 electrode sites that interface directly with brain tissue. It will record from 16 of these sites simultaneously. Each active channel samples at 18.75 kHz to capture rapid neural spikes and waveforms with high precision.
There will be one current source for stimulating any pair of electrodes. Also, the brain chip will monitor impedance and measure voltage transients onboard. It will process data digitally, detect spikes in real-time, and transmit relevant data over low-bandwidth wireless links. The chip will be fabricated using TSMC’s 55 nm process for optimal size and efficiency.
Starfish announced that it is “interested in finding collaborators for whom such a chip would open new and exciting avenues.” The company is looking for people who work in fields like wireless communications or people who design custom implanted neural interfaces. However, any person who believes the brain chip is useful to their field of work is welcome to collaborate.
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