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First Hot-Ice Computer Created

Posted by timothy on from the can-we-run-a-vm-on-it? dept.

KentuckyFC writes "Sodium acetate is the stuff inside chemical handwarmers that emits heat when it crystalizes after you press that little metal widget. That's why it is known as hot ice. Now a computer scientist in the UK has created a computer made entirely out of hot ice. The device processes information by exploiting the movement and interaction of wavefronts of crystallisation as they move through the material. The data input is in the form of metal wires that trigger crystal nucleation. The output works by reading off the direction of the moving wavefronts and the edges of the resulting crystals. The researcher has created AND and OR gates and solved a few problems such as finding the shortest path through mazes. There are even a few videos of the computer in action. The resulting computer is far from perfect, however. The data readout sometimes gives no solution and at other times gives circular results, the hot ice equivalent of a BSOD."

4 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Err, not a BSOD by freeweed · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The data readout sometimes gives no solution and at other times gives circular results, the hot ice equivalent of a BSOD.

    No, it's the hot ice equivalent of an infinite loop.

    Yeesh, get off my lawn.

    --
    Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
  2. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  3. Plasmodium mould by bencoder · · Score: 4, Interesting

    haha... I was about to say how it reminds me of a seminar I went to by a guy doing computing out of plasmodium mould growth so I looked it up, and it's the same guy. hilarious. This hot ice would have a similar growth pattern to the mould growth, but obviously a lot faster, and much more expensive.

  4. Ice Ice by DynaSoar · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'd like to see a water ice computer. Pipes (!) and containers of water, frozen into ice. Doped to carry current efficiently. Areas of interface doped differentially to create N and P equivalent materials for semiconductor creation. It's very doable. So why bother for any reason other than a neat hack? Because it wouldn't be an electronic computer. It would be protonic, because when a voltage is applied to water ice, it's protons, not electrons, that flow.

    --
    "I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B