MCGILL RESEARCHERS MAKES ‘FIRST-EVER’ ENERGY EFFICIENT — SMALL BIOLOGICAL SUPERCOMPUTER

MONTREAL Scientists have apparently opened the door to the world of biological supercomputers: this week they

unveiled a prototype of a potentially revolutionary unit – ass mall as a book, energy-efficient with extreme mathematical capabilities and which, importantly, does not overheat.

Scientists have created an energy efficient biological supercomputer that is able to process information quickly and accurately using parallel networks in the same way that huge electronic supercomputers do.

The potentially revolutionary biological device is powered by adenosine triphosphate,protein strings, which the scientific community often refers to as the “molecular unit ofcurrency.”

The bio supercomputer, which the team of developers refers to as a prototype,because it still needs some work done on it, will open the doors to the creation offuture biological supercomputers that are not only small but also more sustainable.

The results of the joint work led by professor Dan Nicolau from Canada’s McGillUniversity, were published this week in the journal PNAS. “Now that this model existsas a way of successfully dealing with a single problem, there are going to be manyothers who will follow up and try to push it further, using different biological agents,for example,” the Modern Readers technology website quotes the scientist as saying.

The bio supercomputer is not only small, just about the same size as a book, but alsomore sustainable, but with the same mathematical capabilities as have conventional,giant-sized supercomputers. In addition, it is very energy-efficient and doesn’t overheat like its non-biological counterparts do.

The researchers believe a more complete version may be on the cards, with the help of hybridization technology.

“One option for dealing with larger and more complex problems may be to combine our device with a conventional computer to form ahybrid device,” said Nicolau in his press statement. “Right now we’re working on a variety of ways to push the research further.”

According to a team of bioengineers from the McGill University, headed by Professor Dan Nicolau, the new computational concept will be able to handle complex mathematical problems, and with a little fine tuning, it can even perform multiple operations at the same time.