A computer made from DNA can compute the square root of 900
newscientist.com
A computer made from DNA can compute the square root of 900
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Re: A computer made from DNA can compute the square root of 900
#2The "ten building blocks" in the press article are actually ten bits (probably implemented as short DNA sequences chained together). I'm not sure why they can't calculate the square root of 961.
These kind of DNA computers had a lot of hype a few years ago, but for the real applications they are too low and difficult to retarget.
Re: A computer made from DNA can compute the square root of 900
#3The "ten building blocks" in the press article are actually ten bits (probably implemented as short DNA sequences chained together). I'm not sure why they can't calculate the square root of 961. These kind of DNA computers had a lot of hype a few years ago, but for the real applications they are too low and difficult to retarget.
I'm guessing that one reason is that I/O is problematic. But once you can do sufficiently large computations (e.g. factoring large primes), I/O becomes the easy part.
Re: A computer made from DNA can compute the square root of 900
#4Scott Aaronson’s ETH Zurich lectures talk about physical computing (and its limitations, exception being Quantum computing) here: https://gess.ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/paul-bernays-lecture...
He even makes his own “Soap bubble” computer from people who claim that soap bubbles can be used for global parallel optimization problems. Spoiler, it doesn’t work well and gets stuck in local optima as the size gets larger.
Before anyone gets too excited about physical computing ideas, I think watching these 3 lectures from prestigious “Paul Barney’s lectures” is a must. They're about Quantum computing but Scott spends a full lecture about Turing/Extended-Turing thesis and what types of computers in past have tried to break those conjectures (and failed). That is why Quantum computing is interesting - he also dispells a lot of myths about QC we hear today in popular media. Fascinating stuff and I highly recommend spending 3 hours to watch these videos if you're interested in the future of computing.
Re: A computer made from DNA can compute the square root of 900
#5It's interesting to consider that humans are computers made from DNA too.
Re: A computer made from DNA can compute the square root of 900
#6It's interesting to consider that humans are computers made from DNA too.
Yeah, I've been thinking of saying that for a couple days :)
Re: A computer made from DNA can compute the square root of 900
#7Scott Aaronson’s ETH Zurich lectures talk about physical computing (and its limitations, exception being Quantum computing) here: https://gess.ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/paul-bernays-lecture... He even makes his own “Soap bubble” computer from people who claim that soap bubbles can be used for global parallel optimization problems. Spoiler, it doesn’t work well and gets stuck in local optima as the size gets larger.…
Sad, I loved the idea of bubble computing.
I wonder if there are similar ideas with complex electric fields to model equation and enjoy "RT" (sampling speed time) evaluation of solutions.
Re: A computer made from DNA can compute the square root of 900
#8It's interesting to consider that humans are computers made from DNA too.
but we rely on a fat layer of neuronal microcode
Re: A computer made from DNA can compute the square root of 900
#9Re: A computer made from DNA can compute the square root of 900
#10We know this is true, because most people can compute that it is 30. The interesting thing is how little dna is required.