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Scientists build DNA based computer
Archangel Michael writes "Israeli scientists have built a DNA computer so tiny that a trillion of them could fit in a test tube and perform a billion operations per second with 99.8 percent accuracy.
Yahoo News has the story"
Maybe we could have intelligent robots going around fix rougue cells. This is already a procedure for many diseases, but now the DNA injected could be 'smart' DNA and know exactly what to change and what not too.
what if it ran the same calculation, multiple times, then used the resulting "average"?
it seemes to me you could get at leat 5 nines out of that.
so we'll have organic computers, man my frame rate sucks, someone poor some more beer in the CPU holding tank!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Does anyone else have a problem with using the fundamental building block of life to power a computer? How will they know that the source code to WindowsGM isn't the same as, say, HIV?
I know it will probably all be in vitro, but what's going to protect me from getting infected with a stray snipped of 3D rotation code?
Eek! Gives a whole new meaning to "virus".
*meep*
And then alert a repair mechanism when errors are found. It would probably need to survey other cells to compare results.
Here is a link to a Wired article that talks about moletronics, but also specifically mentions applications of tiny computers. How about we equip planes with 10,000 microscopic black boxes instead of relying on just 1?
c s.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/moletroni
But what if it runs it again, and it's innacurate bits match up? ...it could be very precice in its innacuracy...
Alright, let's just say that the computer is indeed forming single bit errors every now and again, that certainly is possible. What methods of error correction are there in place? I'm not familiar with hardware enough to know about that. But if you look at it this way, let's just say that the processor makes one single bit error per 2 cycles, due to any sort of a factor. Now let that spread out a bit..for every five operations, one 1-bit error. 2 cycles x 1 billion cycles per second (that's a reasonable processor speed, isn't it?) would be 2 billion errors in one -second-. And that's assuming that it makes the same amount of errors, and that the errors are confined to the processor alone. Everything on a computer is represented in simple states, on and off..you know that as well as I do. If one of those is -incorrect-, then the system is no longer reliable for any sort of equation, mathematical or otherwise. And we know that's not the case.
from a CS perspective, this does NOT solve NP.
:) )
why? because you switch from an exponential time brute-force method to an exponential cpu-number brute force method.
and practically, there's a limit to the number of molecules you can use.
so the issue is not CS one: it means you have a much higher n in which the problem starts being impracticle.
e.g. you will probably need a cipher the size of a DNA molecule for your future PGP (no, wankers of the world, your own is not good enough, since 99% is like any othres'
Working for necessity's mother.
A gram of material can contain 10^20-odd molecules. We are not really talking billions or trillions, but real monster numbers. Unfortunately the monster parallelism comes with severe I/O limits, and a low clock rate.
Suppose you wanted to crack an RSA cipher. You could use one type of molecule to represent prime numbers, and a second molecule to take one of the first type molecules, and try it on the cipher key. If you start off with a few cc's of prime numbers, you will probably have all of the 40-bit primes many times over, so many molecules will make the right conection.
Unfortunately, the molecules that make the right connection will be vastly outnumbered by the ones that don't, and the ones that went wrong, and the impurities, and everything else. To rescue the signal from the noise, you need another chemical stage. This should allow only the successful molecules to copy themselves. So you mix number solution 1 with RSA key solution 2, and stir it for a few minutes; then you add breeder solution 3, and wait for the most frequently encountered correct result to start crystallizing out.
This is a wonderfully parallel process for searching for a single solution to a simple problem. RSA hackers, and Goooogle might be able to use it, but you can't use it to do your 3-D renders. Awww.....
If we had to crack something like the Enigma codes today, then Bletchley Park would be developing DNA, instead of using relays and valves. The Bletchley Park Colossus was not a computer in today's sense - it was dedicated to solving a single problem - but the same people that developed it also worked on the earlier computers.
Other people have suggested making molecules with the electonic orbital equivalent of the electrical components we have in present circuits. But that was not what that article was about.
You must not understand genetics. These dna computers are just DNA. They have none of the machinery necessary to make proteins. Proteins are needed for a cell or virus to do anything. Proteins can only be made in an extremely complicated process involving DNA. There is no way that a clump of dna will destroy the world.
Thats like saying your piss will self-assemble and kill you.
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