>If it does not work in software, it's not going to work in hardware.

Aren't there limits to what can be simulated in software? Analog systems dealing with infinite precision, and having large numbers of connections between neurons is bound to hit the von Neumann bottleneck for classical computers where memory and compute are separate?

It's not clear that "infinite precision" is a meaningful thing. All inputs and outputs even to analog systems will only ever have finite precision.

“Zero success” seems a bit strong. People have been able to get 96% accuracy on MINST digits on their local machine. https://norse.github.io/notebooks/mnist_classifiers.html I think it may be more accurate to say “1970s level neural net performance”. The evidence suggests it is a nascent field of research.

This seems to work in hardware, per the paper. At least to 80% accuracy.