You know, I think it's pretty funny (with a heaping helping of schadenfreude) that the first graphic in the first link shows some completely arbitrary "DoD Sensing Requirements" compared to actual processor capability. How exactly does one bridge the gap between our current processor capabilities and fucking omniscience? I guess DARPA will try to find out.
They intend to bridge the gap by forfeiting the assumption that transistors and discrete logic need be the atomic units of computation. They give up discretization and call for exotic modes of computation that can achieve reliable, but non binary, behaviors. Chaining these new units together, the idea is to build 'inference modules' - small clusters capable of performing statistical induction and aduction - these modules than able to be chained to perform higher level logic like, for example, detecting shapes and features in input video for tracking.
