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Simple Computation Using Dominos

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the houses-of-cards dept.

An anonymous reader writes "When silicon fails to beat Moores law, maybe dominos can help. This guy has created a half adder in dominos as a proof of concept for domino computation. If he intends to make a full domino computer he's going to need an awful lot of dominos."

9 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Conceptually, it reminds me of by TheCouchPotatoFamine · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A turing version of conway's game of life. But on reflection, if the "dominos" were something like charged nanotubes, then the creation of computing structures could be "grown" in a much different way then current cpu's, kind of think that's neat.

    --
    CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
    1. Re:Conceptually, it reminds me of by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Would you happen to know what the biggest grid of conway ever simulated is? and for how long? I was trying to find stats on this a month or so ago..

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
    2. Re:Conceptually, it reminds me of by d34thm0nk3y · · Score: 4, Interesting

      According to here:

      Andrzej Okrasinski has found a new methuselah record holder, a 15 bit intial pattern with a final population of 1623 after 29053 generations. David Bell quickly found a 13 cell predecessor, bringing the record to 29055.

  2. Re:Domino Logic by kevinmc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Here's another site with an explanation of domino logic using real dominos: http://www.pinkandaint.com/oldhome/comp/dominoes/i ndex.html

  3. Re:Slight problem.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Perhaps some kind of an electromagnetic surface could be used, with one end of each domino having some iron embedded... After the dominoes have toppled, hit a switch that turns on a magnet that pulls them into little slots which turns them upright.

    (captcha: delirium ...)

  4. Quantum Dot Cellular Automata by googlebear · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This kinda reminds me of Quantum Dot Cellular Automata. multivalence compounds are arranged like dominos and one of the "electrons" at one of the ends is shifted to represent the zero or one state and then the electron repulsion forces in the molecules propegate down the chain like dominos acting like adders whathave you. http://www.nd.edu/~qcahome/ -ian

  5. IBM's domino computer by simdan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    IBM actually did some research into using what amounted to molecular dominos for computing. It worked pretty fast, but they literally had to set it up on molecule at a time, and you thought dominos were a pain. They too predict that it might replace transistors. Read more about it here.

  6. Re:Videos on YouTube by Stauf · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not really stupid, but consider - a half-adder is trivial; and an electronic half-adder is just a few wires that when electricity is applied produces the result you would expect from a half-adder.

  7. Turing complete? by mgiuca · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I assume that Dominos aren't (and will never be) turing complete...?

    I mean, each domino can fall over only once. So while you can do an adder, I'm not sure you could really get a for loop going.