Biological supercomputer can eat the same food as a person

Conventional supercomputers have enormous performance, but at the same time there are a lot of shortcomings: they are expensive, consume a lot of electricity, heat up a lot and take up too much space. But what if we apply a radically different approach to the development of microcircuits, generally abandoning standard silicon materials in favor of biological components from nature?

A living book-sized supercomputer will be able to receive energy from adenosine triphosphate (ATP), like all normal organisms. Instead of electrons, information will be transmitted by proteins. An international group of bio-engineers is working on this crazy idea . They recently published the first results of their experiments in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Scientists have designed a microchip with an area of ​​1.5 cm ² , whose architecture resembles the layout of city streets. “Biological agents” (proteins) are moving along these streets. The route along the street network with intersections is determined by a number of conditions. Turning to the right means subtracting a number from a subset, turning to the left means adding a number to a subset. The value of the number depends on the number of turns in the path of the agent. This processor prototype solves only one math problem.
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The principle of calculation is shown in the video.



“We managed to create a very complex network in a very small area,” says bioengineer Dan Nicolau Sr. of Canadian McGill University. His group collaborates with colleagues from Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. “It all started with an idea on a sheet of napkin, after too much rum, I think, with drawings like worms crawling through the mazes.”

In a real biological microprocessor, protein threads - agents - receive energy from ATP, as well as cells in living organisms.

Although the development is at an early stage, but theoretically the biological supercomputer has many advantages over silicon: compact size, energy efficiency, safety for the environment, a high degree of parallelization of processes.

In the second video - shooting a real movement of agents.



“Now that a model has been created that successfully solves one problem, there will be many followers who will go even further using other biological agents, for example,” says Nicolau. - It is difficult to say when we see a full-fledged biological supercomputer. One of the solutions to more serious and complex tasks can be a combination with a regular computer into a hybrid device. Now we are considering various options for continuing research. ”