Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
est biological computing device” ever constructed. One year later that
same team announced a DNA computer that could perform 330 tril-
lion operations per second, more than 100,000 times the speed of the
fastest PC. In the newer device, the single DNA molecule that provides
the computer with its input data also provides all of the necessary fuel for
it to operate. An enzyme breaks some of the bonds in the double helix
of the DNA, causing the release of enough energy for the system to be
self-sufficient.
The Molecular Computer (Nano-Machines)
On 1 November 1999
The New York Times
published an article announc-
ing a coming revolution in nano-technology, the science of the develop-
ment and use of devices that have a size of only a few nanometres.
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The
article began boldly:
Scientists at a variety of elite laboratories around the country, are
sharing a growing sense that they are on the brink of a new era in
digital electronics. It will usher in a world of circuits no more than
a few atoms wide, with a potential impact on computing, in terms
of speed and memory, that may be too profound to fathom. [5]
The article touches on a wide range of research efforts, including the an-
nouncement the previous summer of a molecular logic gate developed
by a team at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories and the University of Califor-
nia at Los Angeles. Mark Reed, chairman of the Electrical Engineering
Department at Yale University, is quoted as saying
This should scare the pants off anyone working in silicon.
Reed was not speaking speculatively. Yale University had already issued a
press release announcing that a collaborative team, led by Reed and James
Tour of Rice University's Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology,
had demonstrated “a memory element the size of a single molecule.”
One of the remarkable aspects of the Weizmann Institute's DNA
computer described in the previous section is that not only can it perform
ultra-fast computation, it is also incredibly small. The whole assembly
comprises no more than 20 molecules, which are held together in a liq-
uid rather than being connected to one another like the components of
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One nanometre is 0.000000001 metres (0.000001 millemetres).
