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Brain-Inspired Computer Made From Duroquinone
hasu notes that scientists at the National Institute for Materials Science at Tsukuba in Japan have created a device, consisting of 17 duroquinone molecules on a gold surface, that can in theory encode 4.3 billion outcomes. The "device" does not constitute a practical computer, since it requires both a scanning tunneling microscope and operation near absolute zero. A single duroquinone is surrounded by sixteen others, and weak chemical bonds allow a pulse to the central molecule to shift all seventeen molecules in a variety of ways. Each duroquinone has four different "settings," so a single pulse can have 4^16 possible outcomes. As a demonstration the researchers docked 8 other nano-devices to their 17-molecule computer. It is unclear how well they have characterized the inputs that result in 4.3 billion different outputs. They are working on a 3D design that would have 1,024 duroquinone molecules surrounding a central one.
Given the current state of this technology (requiring a STM and very low temperatures) I question how soon, if ever, this type of "computer" will become useful for independent nano bots, especially within the human body or other non-ideal environment. However, for working on a molecular scale to control things in a lab, this technology seems to have more immediate promise.
Could someone tell me what they mean by "operation near absolute zero."?
1&1 - Cheap domain and web hosting.
will it run Linux?
Doesn't sound like impressive computing. But hey, anyone doing research is at least doing something with their time.
God spoke to me.
I for one welcome our frozen, gold plated robotic overlords.
Nanotechnology? That's so early 2000's, we're onto picotechnology now!
Seriously, though, this is incredibly small! The molecular computation machiniery necessary to direct our nanomachines are going to be far more interesting, challenging, and incredible than the nanomachines themselves.
Demented But Determined.
This is a bit more graphical than TFA: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/10/748041.aspx
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
I thought the state of the art way to make brains involved copulaton.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It can help keep my beer cold. Very cold.
Every time you call tech support, a little kitten dies.
Me bitter? Nah. I still think they got one don't I? Marks me as a romantic fool that.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Or, Bock's Sprain? Or, was that "Spock's Brain"?
" The machine is made from 17 molecules of the chemical duroquinone. Each one is known as a "logic device".
They each resemble a ring with four protruding spokes that can be independently rotated to represent four different states."
Would they be: Liquid, Gas, Solid, Kinetic/Memetic or Magnetic/Frenetic?
And, if you built one of these for Frankenstein, and it crashed from over-guttural grunting, would it be Blankenstein?
Can they be used to create drones, or upgrade government drones already in existence? Can they be trusted with weapons, and to guard the infrastructure?
Inquiring organic minds want to know...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
It's EXpressive: Mathematical AND artistic.
But, if they use it in bugs, and they abandon their masters, it will give a new meaning to "buggin out". If they emerge from a wig-wearing woman, then we literally have "wiggin out".
But, as for expressionism.... do you want IMpressionism?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
That's like, 2^32.
:)
Is this really a computer? Or 32 bits worth of really impractical memory?
They clearly mean four different logical states as they call the molecules logical devices.
what the hell did I just read?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I'm trying to understand how something like this could be used to implement a turing-complete device, and I'm not seeing it. The examples given in the article make it sound more like a serial to parallel converter, not a computer.
Obviously I was crafting puns on Star Trek history:
Kirk (toward Spock): YOU are ILLOGICAL
Boma (referring to Spock): I'm sick and TIRED of taking orders from this MACHINE!
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
What does a cell phone have to do with a flat tire. A far more witty comeback would have been "The next time you get a flat tire I hope it's in the middle of the desert, and you realise that you droped your 4-way a few miles back, and your spare is flat" However the sort of creative cruelty that I've come to expect from Slashdot is clearly lacking from you. Now, if you'd care to try for a proper insult, please, go ahead, I have a quite thick skin, but at least make things make sense. Though, if you actualy are meaning that I'm incapable of changing a flat by myself, I think you might have more issues than simply being unable to come up with a proper dig. Thank you for trying. Oh, and please, log in next time you try to start a flame war with me, I find them far more entertaining when my partner is informed of my posts, so that they can do something resembling defending themselves.
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
Education actually
destroys the analytial Brain,
leaving only a single brain
perspective android servility.
Educators who suppress the
Harmonic Time Cube 4 Day
4 corner Earth simultaneous
rotation should be ki...., for
they threaten all humanity.
I heard on the first test it rolled a 20.
Clearly, but every funny man needs a straight man. :D
Anon, don't let Jtev throw you off your pace. It's obvious he's suffering from self esteem issues (generally characterized by a condescending attitude towards others and an effort to appear "intelligent" or to "lecture" others on correct behavior. The interesting thing is how these types of individuals will take the time to post on a forum, appear to be a good natured person at the beginning (by providing "helpful" info", then poison the whole thing with the aforementioned negative and destructive behavior.
Unfortunately this is the type of thing that keeps people who are looking for information from asking. It's also a tool for these unfortunate persons (like Jtev) to live vicariously through these forum persona's they create since, generally, they have no real friends. I mean would you want to hang out with a guy like Jtev?
The world's first stored-program computer only stored 32 words, where one word was 40 bits in length, making this 1/40th of the capacity of Alan Turing's "Baby" (aka Manchester Mk. 1) computer. Seriously, though, this is impressive in the sense that they got the thing to work at all. Storing and recovering data from a device this small is non-trivial, especially if they've got the read to be non-destructive. At this scale, the impact of carrying out the observation is non-trivial. If they need to cool to near absolute zero, it's obviously delicate enough that they need to damp down everything to keep the system working. But precisely because almost anything can be kept constant at that temperature, I'd consider this "cheating" a little. You could probably store and recover data on almost any sufficiently uniform structure if nothing is moving.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I think they mean inspired BY the brain, not inspired to work AS the brain. Unless of course, you're playing twister.
...and in further news, this technology has been partnered with substantial funding and research by the Microsoft corporation to develop the smallest 'blue-screen-of-death' ever. Bringing the term 'brain-freeze' a whole new meaning.
I am open source, and Linux baby!
I have to agree with this one. Is bioimformatics processor constrained right now? I doubt it.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Depending on the nature of the weak chemical bond and how the 16 molecules respond the slight charge, you might actually see different states for different charges which leads to input output relationship. It sounds like when you rotate one of the molecules, the others change appropriately. It's possible then that you could structure the molecules in such a way that you could form logic gates where you'd set two of them and a chain would produce a series of logical operators, however it also seems to function in base four, so it would have to be a fuzzy logic. And with that I've reached my thinking quota for today.
Oh honey look... How cute... an angry slashdotter!
However if one stops properly asking questions (or as the guy he was answering did, improperly asking) every time someone tells them there is a much better way (or any way is better) method to do it, then you deserve what you get.
Smart people gave that person every possible tool to answer his own question.
Hell, you can hilight 'absolute zero' in firefox, right click, and do a google search right then and there!
If someone does not by now realize search engines and info databases (AKA google and wikipedia) exist, perhaps they shouldn't be using technical sites like slashdot.
This is not a computer, this is 4 bytes of memory. 4^16 is the same as 2^32.
Anyone else notice the three sequential posts referencing the wikipedia absolute zero article that were posted right in a row and at the same time? Spooky.
Name: Mr. Anon E Mouse; SSN: 555-55-5555
Is a meme dead when it gets modded as troll?
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
Of all the stories on Google News about this event, Slashdot's summary is the only one mentioning this molecular computer having to run near absolute zero. In fact, other articles mention this device being made near absolute zero, but not requiring cold for operation.
So I did a little test. I went to Google news and searched for "computer duroquinone".
Then I searched for "http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=lJI&resnum=0&um=1&resnum=1&ct=title&q=Computer+Duroquinone+zero&btnG=Search+News">computer duroquinone zero. Notice when you add zero -- for absolute zero -- only Slashdot's story summary returns.
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
dude. why don't they just take a brain from one of those people who donates their body to science (after the person passes away, of course), and hook it up to a bunch of connectors and whatnot that would allow it to interface to a regular computer system! then you could have a network of brains in jars figuring stuff out, as opposed to server rooms full of hot electronic computers doing their whole number crunching thing.