You might not know it from the promising talk of conversational computers, self-driving cars and lifelike human prosthetics, but computing is confronting a crisis. After decades of rapid acceleration, the speed of transistors — computerization’s fundamental building blocks — is hitting a wall. But to the relief of researchers and industry leaders, a superstar scholar who immigrated to the United States from Ghana may have found a way forward. It concerns neuromorphic computing — mimicking the processes of the human brain — which has long been recognized as both a hugely daunting technological challenge and the likely key to solving the transistor problem.

http://www.chronicle.com/article/An-Immigrant-Scholar-Leads-the/239410