It is false that "parallelizing a cellular automaton is trivial". I can't easily build my own, special-purpose hardware because Intel, AMD, and other such companies control the process, and that's mostly due to the expense of today's silicon foundries being unaffordable to hobbyists. Even if I use the latest FPGAs, such as the Virtex-7 (#1), I am still limited by the underlying technology choices made by Xilinx, as well as by the high cost and continued availability of these high-end parts. I realize that the OP is about some cool work that is merely at the R&D stage, but the bottom-line message is that this could lead to a technique whereby ordinary mortals, albeit ones with (potentially homemade) STMs, could create their own circuitry. It's a pretty big deal if this work results in me being able to build, with relative ease, a huge CA array, upon which I can then apply, through programming, a wide range of computational topologies.
"parallelizing a cellular automaton is trivial" != "build my own, special-purpose hardware"
You can parallelize a cellular automaton trivially with any form of parallel computation, from multiple cores, to a GPU, to an FGPA. Hence my skepticism that their application is particularly revolutionary or brain-relevant, as the article seems to imply.
As for FPGAs you can get them fairly cheaply if you aren't looking for a top of the line beast. [1] Given that you can emulate anything up to and including a Pentium on a sufficiently powerful FPGA, I fail to see how you are "limited by the manufacturers design choices" or why you can't "apply a wide range of computational topologies" on one.
In any event, the breathless tone of the article about "brain-like" computing and this somehow being a parallelism silver bullet are unwarranted.
#1: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3162791