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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.
Well, Absolute Zero is a temperature that has been extrapolated from the ideal gas law. It is the temperature at which all kinetic energy in the molecules of a substance reaches 0. For more information on Absolute Zero, and teperature scales based on it take a look at this wikipedia page and please do not expect the rest of us to do you thinking for you in the future.
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
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.
You got confused by the article. It's not 4.3 billion states, it's ONE out of 4.3 billion states. In other words, it's equivalent to about 32 bits of storage, or log2(4^16). Similarly, the 1024 molecule structure will not hold the equivalent of 4^1024 bits, but only log2(4^1024) bits.
Exactly right. Each of the sixteen molecules plays the role of two bits. They've made four bytes of ram.
It's good that they're researching this; maybe someday it'll lead to faster, more compact storage. But when they release statements about how they can store "4.3 billion different states", they seem to be trying to market themselves. You can do the same with 32 pennies.