Israeli researchers have designed a DNA computer able to perform 330 trillion operations per second.
Does this mean it's the fastest computer in the world? Wait a minute.
Here is a short quote from "Computer Made from DNA and Enzymes," published by National Geographic.
While a desktop PC is designed to perform one calculation very fast, DNA strands produce billions of potential answers simultaneously. This makes the DNA computer suitable for solving "fuzzy logic" problems that have many possible solutions rather than the either/or logic of binary computers. In the future, some speculate, there may be hybrid machines that use traditional silicon for normal processing tasks but have DNA co-processors that can take over specific tasks they would be more suitable for.
I think that reporters are sometimes so astonished by big numbers that they're not really accurate. Take for example this quote from a Scientific American article, "New DNA Computer Functions sans Fuel."
The authors report that a microliter of [their] solution could hold three trillion computers, which together would perform 66 operations a second.
This is not really fast, isn't?
If you want real information, the best is to read a summary of the research conducted by the scientists of the Weitzmann Institute of Science. It is published in today's online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Here is an excerpt from the abstract.
The unique properties of DNA make it a fundamental building block in the fields of supramolecular chemistry, nanotechnology, nano-circuits, molecular switches, molecular devices, and molecular computing. In our recently introduced autonomous molecular automaton, DNA molecules serve as input, output, and software, and the hardware consists of DNA restriction and ligation enzymes using ATP as fuel. In addition to information, DNA stores energy, available on hybridization of complementary strands or hydrolysis of its phosphodiester backbone. Here we show that a single DNA molecule can provide both the input data and all of the necessary fuel for a molecular automaton.
Sources: Yaakov Benenson, Rivka Adar, Tamar Paz-Elizur, Zvi Livneh, and Ehud Shapiro, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, February 24, 2003; Stefan Lovgren, for National Geographic News, February 24, 2003; Sarah Graham, Scientific American, February 25, 2003
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