I don't understand if those chips are designed to function like real neurons in the brain, or just designed to run artificial neural networks (ie matrix multiplication).

In the beginning it seems that they do mimick real neurons, but later the article says that it runs deep learning benchmarks. How can they run the benchmark, how did they train their chips ?

I'm not sure if this is what they're doing with this project, but in the past they've used separate chips for training and running the NN https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/nervana/nnp

I'd imagine that the actual architecture consists of a large number of neuron-like components that can be interconnected in various ways, allowing different application to run, or maybe even learn. This is a lot like how an FPGA works!

As usual, the reporter broadcasts the hype without really understanding what any of what they're just reported on really means. We're slowly coming to the point in media where every "outside of the field" reporter is basically just fake news.