Blog: Researchers Make Significant Advances in Molecular Computing

Researchers Make Significant Advances in Molecular Computing
University of Kent (12/10/09)

The fundamental limits of molecular computing have been defined by researchers at the University of Kent, which published their findings in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. The research also discusses how fast molecular computers can perform a computation, which must be addressed in order to design machines that use components of organisms to run calculations inside living cells. The metabolic rate or the ability to process energy would determine the speed of bio-molecular computers, says Kent's Dominique Chu. "One of our main findings is that a molecular computer has to balance a trade-off between the speed with which a computation is performed and the accuracy of the result," Chu says. "However, a molecular computer can increase both the speed and reliability of a computation by increasing the energy it invests in the computation." He says this energy could be derived from food sources. Moreover, he believes the findings have the potential to be of practical importance for computing in general.

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