Scientists are engineering a new, more efficient generation of computer chips by modeling them after the human brain.

Remember when all you could do on your cellphone was call, text, maybe play snake? Since then, phones got faster and smaller and around every two years, you probably upgraded your phone from 8 gigs to 16 to 32 and so on and so forth. This incremental technological progress we've all been participating in for years hinges on one key trend, called Moore's Law.

Co-founder of Intel, Gordon Moore made a prediction in 1965 that integrated circuits, or chips, were the path to cheaper electronics. Moore's law states that the number of transistors, the tiny switches that control the flow of an electrical current that can fit in an integrated circuit, will double every two years, while the cost will halve. Chip power goes up as cost goes down. That exponential growth has brought massive advances in computing power, hence tiny computers in our pockets!

Now, Moore's law isn't a law of physics, it's just a good hunch that's driven companies to make better chips. But experts are claiming that this trend is slowing down. So, to power the next wave of electronics, there are a few promising options in the works. One idea currently in the lab stage is neuromorphic computing, which are computer chips that are modeled after our own brains! They're basically capable of learning and remembering all at the same time at an incredibly fast chip.

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