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.

Comments

Re:Elaboration Please

[stuporglue]

It will only work when run in a super cold freezer or, possibly, in Canada.

Really cold : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_zero

Video and model

[whitehatlurker]

This is a bit more graphical than TFA: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/10/748041.aspx