Physicist Proposes a New Type of Computing

SpankiMonki writes "Joshua Turner, a physicist at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, has proposed using the orbits of electrons around the nucleus of an atom as a new means to generate the binary states used in computing. Turner calls his idea orbital computing. Turner points to recent discoveries (including a new material that allows rapid switching of its electron states and new low-power terahertz laser technology) that could lead to the development of a computer with vastly improved performance over current technologies."

Comments

Imagine one of these running Android!

[Anonymous Coward]

The catch is that to generate a tight enough pulse of sufficient intensity to do this, you need an accelerator two miles long. But if you manage that, you can switch electron states 10,000 times faster than transistor states can be switched.

Ok, so it won't be a portable device...

Re:Imagine one of these running Android!

[Zalbik]

Ok, so it won't be a portable device...

No, but imagine a beowulf cluster of....

nevermind...

Ray was right!

[NoImNotNineVolt]

Here comes the singularity!

Disclaimer: posted in jest to rile up all the Kurzweil haters. Where's your "hit the limit of silicon" argument now, huh? :P

Re:Ray was right!

[ceoyoyo]

You're making up numbers. We've had billions of transistors on chips for some time now. The XBox One's main chip has five billion transistors. And that's just one chip. The Titan supercomputer has nearly 200 trillion transistors.

If the transistor doubling time remains about the same, you can equate any number of transistors you like to a neuron and Kurzweil's prediction still won't be off by much. Such is the nature of exponential curves. Sophisticated objections to his predictions don't involve transistor counts.

Nobody knows how much of a neuron you need to build a brain. If you actually have to simulate it, possibly at the quantum level, then no number of transistors may be sufficient. You can probably get around that problem by not using regular transistors though. Sufficient artificial neurons might actually be easier to build - noise and interference are probably not as harmful as they are in regular computing, and may actually be beneficial.

New Type of "Computing"

[Tyler Durden]

When I first read the headline I thought the physicist was offering a computational model alternative to the Turing Machine. It sounds like he's offering a new type of computer, not computing.

Re:New Type of "Computing"

[thesandbender]

Actually, it could prove to be radically different than current computers/computing. Almost all current computers are based on binary logic, your bit is either on or off. Electrons can actually have several orbital states so it is possible that computing could be approached in a different manner. This assumes that logic could actually be performed with the orbital states and it's not just a bit store. All of this is quite a long way off though, per the article you currently need a two mile long accelerator to change the orbital state of an electron this accurately.

The most important question ever

[NapalmV]

Does it run Office?

Re:New push for inovations?

[fisted]

I'm dreaming of a technology to finally teach people where and where not to use apostrophes.