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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.
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 their wimpy 16 part prototype. Eventually, they hope to control 1024 parts, allowing them to store 4^1024 bits of data with a single pulse... in a single molecule.