China is planning to develop a cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) processor as it eyes on establishing its stronghold in the global chip market. The Chinese Academy of Sciences has allocated 10 million yuan ($1.4 million) for the sophisticated project.

The new processor, which is named after the geological history's Cambrian Period, is proposed to offer extreme assistance in simulating the functioning of the human brain. The Cambrian chip "is expected to be the world's first processor that simulates human nerve cells and synapses to conduct deep learning," state-backed Xinhua News reported.

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Xinhua further revealed that the investment fund will be "used in basic research areas to explore the structure and algorithm for the next-generation of AI" and the promotion of the Cambrian processor that is "expected to spearhead a new era in AI."

Chen Yunji, who is part of the Cambrian research team, cited a significant difference between Google's AlphaGo program and the Cambrian chip.

"AlphaGo needs huge power and large servers to operate, but the Cambrian aims to perform at the same level, use just one watt of power and be the size of a smartphone or a watch," Chen said.

Google's AI program AlphaGo made history last year after it took down Korean Go master Lee Se-dol at 4-1. The victory of the computer shocked many experts who believe that the current state of AI technology is still far from beating a top-class Go player, Sputnik News noted.

With the emerging capacity of AI, the question now lies not on which human could beat AlphaGo but which AI can. Quartz pointed that Chinese tech giant Tencent could offer an answer with its GO AI tech called Jueyi (or FineArt).

FineArt recently snatched the championship title in the 10th Computer Go UEC Cup in Japan and won all 11 games, even defeating Japan's Deep Zen Go twice in both the qualifying and final stages. Although the AlphaGo was not present during the latest competition, the contest was joined by 30 of the best AI Go-playing software systems in the world including Facebook's Darkforest and France's Crazy Stone.