Interview with Tony Tether from Darpa
We're on the verge of having computers with densities approaching a monkey's brain, and it won't be long before we'll have a computer with the density of transistors, or equivalent to neurons and almost human. What we're missing is the architecture. So it seemed like it was time. We had great advances in algorithms for reasoning and in algorithms that learned in general. At the same time, the computers, the actual intrinsic hardware, was really approaching the density of a human brain.
Long, but great article about a remarkable organization. Note for the record...your desktop PC has the processing power of a mosquito.
From Wired News