Intel has announced its first self-learning neuromorphic chip, named Loihi, which it says will get smarter over time and enable extremely power efficient designs. This follows IBM’s work on neuromorphic processors, which draw inspiration from the human brain, and are poised to heavily disrupt any application that needs processing power in a mobile device. Following the Loihi announcement, Intel also unveiled a new quantum computing chip, in collaboration with QuTech (a Dutch company that scored $50m of Intel investment in 2015), which was developed over the past 18 months. That’s a very different proposition from the machine learning elements in Loihi, but Intel is pouring money into its R&D divisions, hoping to keep its processors ahead of the curve and fend off…