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Manu Prakash, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford, and his students have developed a synchronous computer that operates using the unique physics of moving water droplets. Their goal is to design a new class of computers that can precisely control and manipulate physical matter.
[...] "In this work, we finally demonstrate a synchronous, universal droplet logic and control," Prakash said.
Because of its universal nature, the droplet computer can theoretically perform any operation that a conventional electronic computer can crunch, although at significantly slower rates. Prakash and his colleagues, however, have a more ambitious application in mind.
"We already have digital computers to process information. Our goal is not to compete with electronic computers or to operate word processors on this," Prakash said. "Our goal is to build a completely new class of computers that can precisely control and manipulate physical matter. Imagine if when you run a set of computations that not only information is processed but physical matter is algorithmically manipulated as well. We have just made this possible at the mesoscale."
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday June 10 2015, @04:56PM
Integer overflows were "messy" before but now they are literally messy.
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(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday June 10 2015, @04:58PM
Actually! the overflow would be completely different too. A byte overflowing would be zero if you ignored the exception. A water based computer would still be 255 after the overflow.
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(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday June 10 2015, @05:16PM
Sorry for self-replying so much. Just finished reading the article and that thing is barely a water computer. Ferrofluid droplets are moved with a magnetic field across iron bars. It doesn't sound like any accumulation happens at all to represent larger numbers. I don't see a way to provide variable branching because the magnetic fields are only providing a "clock". The only things that change state are the droplets physical locations and i saw no example of droplet to droplet interaction. I was thrilled but then disappointed : /
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