Nano-chemical Computation Heralds New Era in Molecular IT

Scientists have achieved the goal of creating a nano-scale “chemical brain” that can transmit instructions to multiple (at present as many as 16) molecular “machines” simultaneously. The new molecular processor means that nano-chemical computation may soon be possible, ushering in a new era in super-light, super-fast, more versatile computer processing capabilities and, by extension, robotics.

The BBC reports that:

The machine is made from 17 molecules of the chemical duroquinone. Each one is known as a “logic device”.

They each resemble a ring with four protruding spokes that can be independently rotated to represent four different states.

One duroquinone molecule sits at the centre of a ring formed by the remaining 16. All are connected by chemical bonds, known as hydrogen bonds.

The structure is just 2 nanometers in diameter, and can produce 4 billion different permutations of chemical transmission of “information”. This allows for a far more efficient distribution of information than a traditional binary circuit.

The researchers say the structure of the “chemical brain” was inspired by the activity of glial cells in the human brain. Glial cells are non-neuronal “glue” or connective cells. In the brain, they are estimated to outnumber neurons by 10 to 1 and assist in chemical transmission of neural signals. Their ability to transmit signals in parallel, or to multiple tangent cells at once, reportedly gave rise to the 17-molecule duroquinone design.

In recent years, the ability of research teams and engineers to keep pace with “Moore’s law” —which predicts that computing speed (by way of the reduction in size of processing units or the increasing density of circuits possible in a given space) will double roughly every 18 months— has been tested, due to heat-diffusion constraints and the related energy bleed.

Nano-chemical processors would enable an entirely new structure for the smallest-scale computing circuits, and could lead to serious advances in the nature and capabilities of microprocessors, which are far larger in size and could therefore contain many times more circuits than at present.

The researchers have reportedly already moved beyond the initial 17-molecule design, capable of processing 16 instructions simultaneously, to devices capable of 256 simultaneous transmissions. They are also designing a molecular device that would be capable of up to 1024 simultaneous transmissions.

• BBC: “Chemical brain controls nanobots”
• Wikipedia: “Glial cell”
• Intel: “Intel Opens First High-Volume 45nm Microprocessor Manufacturing Factory”

Cloudscape Computing: the Dispersed Matrix as ‘Infinite’ Computing Platform

As the web moves into a more mature stage of its adolescence, the beginnings of an all-media platform, computing has begun to move to the “cloud” format. Cloudscape computing means that software, files, private accounts and processing power are dispersed over an extensive array of machines across the world.

“The Cloud” is the world wide web, and the nature of cloudscape computing can provide significant, if surprising, returns in security and accessibility. Dispersing, via dedicated encryption, the bits that compose a given file over an array of servers, with some redundancy, can make it more difficult to hack into any actual file or file storage device.

And, where cloudscape storage and computing come into play, there is a genuine motivation for large organizations, or for the pressures of the vast consumer and advertising marketplace, to push for ever more accessibility (wirelessly, in mobile telephony) to online material, which could have a positive effect both in fomenting further innovation, broadening the array of services available and bringing prices down.

Cloudscape computing does have its shortcomings, or its risk areas, but all in all, it is one of the commercial practices most likely to push into new terrain in mobile and wireless web access. With that, however, comes the serious means of market control it may lend to web-based software giants like Google. As always, the freedom of content access, generation and distribution is a paramount concern.

The real change of dynamic in computing connection time and browsing tendencies, comes with the types of services that can be made available by way of dispersed or distributed document and database hosting. More dynamic websites, more graphic-intense visual content, higher processing speeds, software applications that require zero installation and zero hard-disk space, accessible-from-anywhere desktop publishing suites and content-management technologies, are just a few.

Cloudscape computing requires a level of impeccability in encryption and programming that goes beyond what has been required in consumer computing to date. But this demand is also a challenge that will help promote new exploration of the potential benefits of more complex, more flexible, more resilient encryption paradigms.

We will only begin to see real benefits of distributed computing capacity, for the average end-user, when instant document-transfer encryption stands have advanced far beyond what we now enjoy, layered and impromptu in ways that will require one or two orders of magnitude more processing speed (and bandwidth) than is now commonly available.