Fluid Logic Chips

Posted by timothy on Wednesday October 6, 2004 @12:00PM from the if-rains-pours dept.

Doc Ruby writes "Colorado researchers 'have constructed microfluidic gates that use the relative flow resistance of liquid to carry out the basic logic operations NOT, AND, OR, XOR, NOR and NAND. The researchers have also combined a pair of gates into a half adder, which carries out half the operation of addition.' All CPUs processing binary logic are made of these types of gates, but usually execute as flows of electrons in wires, not fluids in tubes. Will this advance revolutionize chemistry and computing the way electric gates revolutionized electronics and computing? Will 'fluid programmers' give new meaning to "flowchart"?"

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Re:How fast? by Kulic · 2004-10-06 13:03 · Score: 0, Redundant

I feel that I should point out a flaw in your argument. You say that the water will be "almost instantly" expelled from the other end. Maybe in a short tube, but the time between you applying pressure on one end and the time water comes out the other end is the time taken for the pressure wave to move throughout the medium (I think this is normally the speed of sound in the medium, although special cases exist).

In short, this does not hold for large systems. Yes, I am a physicist.