Future Computers

jethro200 writes "Popsci.com has an interesting story on the up-and-coming silicon replacements, ranging from DNA to a little molecule called thiol to using atoms in a quantum state. Obviously, these are a long way from being your next desktop, but an interesting article nonetheless."

Comments

Re:What I find truly amazing

[Ieshan]

This sort of stuff bothers me.

We don't have a 3-5 pound computer sitting in our heads. We have a 3-5 pound brain emulator sitting on our desk.

The point of the computer (originally) was to do complex tasks that took the human brain too much time. It does slave-like replication. It's an emulation of something we can already do, in theory.

Furthermore, the human brain is far from puny. We have 10^15th synapses, which is far more connections than there are genes in our genome, or even stars in the galaxy. 10^15th synapses is an incredibly large number to imagine. A synapse is a neuronal connection. A data transfer point.

I urge the above poster to consider the fact that life and thought have been debated for thousands of years. We *can* be so difficult to figure out.

Notes on quantum computing...

[wbav]

I thought that this might be interesting for a few of those who don't know much about quantum computing.

The idea is to have a bit that can be a 1 or 0 at the same time. This means that with 50 bits, called qubits, you can represent every number from 1 to 1 trillion, at the same time.

What's really cool, is with this you can use what's called a bogo sort. Imagine a set of cards, that is shuffled. Now to sort them in order, most people would go through 1 by 1 and put some in front and some in back. A bogo sort creates a new universe and then throws the cards into the air. If they land in order, great, else destroy the universe.

All these universes are created at the same time, making it 1 step to sort 52 cards. Like I said, it's interesting.