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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"
Are they sure that the calculation just isn't off by .2%?
99.8% accuracy is fine for a proof-of-concept demo, but as always, the devil is in the details. This won't be a useful technology until it can do a hell of a lot better than that. I certainly wouldn't trust my PC if it made mistakes on .2% of its calculations. Who knows, it might take several years to develop a really usable version of this, or it might never get into the market at all if, say, other technologies can beat it to market or have better cost/performance ratios.
Man, a whole galaxy could have signed up for free AOL service with the DNA I just jetissoned...
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
I am no scientist... but a trillion of these can perform a billion operations? is this correct? can someone explain WHY it takes 1000 computers per operation?
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
but the kids only have a 60% accuracy. My wife blames me...
:(
And then alert a repair mechanism when errors are found. It would probably need to survey other cells to compare results.
from the article:
When a trillion computers run together they are capable of performing a billion operations
So, if does that mean that there are 1,000 tiny computers for each individual operation, or is some translator mixing up his numbers?
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
1. Imagine a BEOWULF cluster of these!!!
Ha ha.. I've heard that joke so many times, it's started to be really funny. I even say it at bars... someone points out the nice rack on this girl who walks in and I yell out "IMAGINE A BEOWULF CLUSTER OF THOSE!" and everyone gets real quiet and stares at me like I'm crazy or something....
- kengineer
"99.8 percent accuracy"
"Yikes, I've got the blue gunk of death!"
Absolutely, every couple of months there is a new news article about a ground-breaking new type of computer. But each time, it's basically just "hey look, we managed to get this to do something that kinda looks like basic computer operations". Quantom computers sound really cool, DNA computers sound really cool, but where is a reasonable long term plan? Where's something to actually get excited about?
I can build AND, NOT and XOR gates out of cats, mice and string. I can string a thousand of these gates together... but i won't be able to install an OS on it in any practical way.
I'll be excited when one of these test-tubes can play mp3s, compile my kernel, and send me instant messages telling me what website i can see AVIs of Britney Spears being ravaged by high school football players at. Until then, i just don't care.
The abiility to do FLOPs does not a Turing Machine make.
lysergically yours
Oh!....Oh!....Oh *Shit*! We're fucking surrounded by solar powered DNA based machines! They're everywhere! I have to put my tinfoil hat back on now.
I don't even know why I read the news anymore.
I don't even know why you bother to post here anymore.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
99.8% accurate.
Which means it'll make 2 million mistakes every second.
I think my bank and government use these.
The Internet is generally stupid
Don't worry--if the viruses you postulate become reality, they will depend on us for their existence. Being intelligent, they will no doubt farm us as we farm cows. You will have a place in the new order.
The Yahoo article is fairly content-free (and take a lot of space doing it). Here is the link to the the Weismann Institue abstract. http://www.weizmann.ac.il/math/users/lbn/public_ht ml/new_pages/Abstract.html
Note that the 99.8% is what the abstract calls "Transition Fidelity" and is unclear what it means. I take it to mean that from input to output, the answer as read, is corret 99.8% of the time.
It is interesting that they claim to be implementing a Turing machine. Previous uses of DNA has been mostly for the Travelling Salesman Problem with has a (more or less) natural mapping to DNA.
Many of you have been complaining that .2% error is pretty bad, but there is a pretty damn easy way to fix this, just compute all the data twice, if you find that two bits don't match, calculate that bit again. Sure it halves the efficiency, but cosnidering how small they already are, and i assume, cheap, it doens't matter
A rabbit in the hand is worth 4 in the cage
How do you tell which ones are which?
That's Nothing. The other night the star quarterback and the head cheerleader created a practical DNA computer in the back of his Chevy pickup.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
It's my understanding that all they are doing is allowing molecules to combine into a tremendous number of configurations, then filtering out the ones that don't have the characteristics they'd expect from a solution to a particular problem. Then they just verify the shape of the structure of the remaining molecules. It's only slightly more sophisticated than having a trillion monkeys typing on a trillian keyboards (except in this case, they know when a monkey is close to the answer they want).
It might be possible to solve NP-complete problems in this fashion (i.e. is there a hamiltonian circuit containing N vertices in this molecule's structure), but the amount of time and effort needed to set up the system and filter out the results does not seem worthwhile. Further, this requires that they already know what kind of structure they expect as an answer (in order to filter it out from the rest), so it will only work on problems where they already have a good guess about the answer. Not something you can expect to see as a general problem-solver.
In otherwords, I don't expect to see Apache running on this anytime, ever. Might be interesting for conjecture, but my money's on quantum computing for this kind of problem solving (at least q-bits have a chance of being interfaced with existing computer hardware).
that kinda made me think that 'rack-mount' can have some very different meanings...
sic transit gloria mundi
DNA is not comprised of cells, nor are cells comprised of DNA. DNA is short for deoxyribonucleic acid, as everybody knows. DNA is simply a molecule formed from four different base molecules that have a tendency to bond together in a spiral fashion. DNA is not alive, nor does it magically spring into life. It's simply one type of amino acid. Amino acids are found in lots of places. Arguing that DNA is a lifeform is like arguing that sugar or a cake recipe is a cake. Life on earth just happens to use DNA as design instructions for how to build itself.
"I don't mean to get off on a rant here," but I can't find anything intelligible in your post. No offense.
A solution to the problem with music today
Wow, just imagine a trillion Israeli scienists in a test tube. It's a snug fit, but in such close proximity, they still perform a billion operations per second!
I think we should build another DNA computer and put a whole international consortium of scientists into it! Just imagine the results.
Ceci n'est pas une sig