For the first time ever, University of Manchester scientists led by Professor Ross D. King have demonstrated the feasibility of building a new kind of computer that can potentially put quantum computers in the backseat (at least for a while). It’s a DNA-based computer that will fall under the category of a nondeterministic universal Turing machine (NUTM) and it can theoretically do computations faster than any other form of computer, even quantums.
A quantum computer is supposed to be able to perform several computations at the same time. This is because instead of using regular bits that can only represent 0 or 1, a quantum computer makes use of qubits (short for quantum bits) that can represent 0, 1, or 0 and 1 at the same time (referred to as superpositioning), which makes it compute faster. The road to building a quantum computer has been rough, though, and up to now, no one has managed to build one because of the complexities involved with qubits, superpositioning and quantum-entanglement.
Here is where the proposed DNA computer comes in. Instead of the seemingly impossible conditions needed to make a quantum computer, or the fixed number of silicon chips that make up traditional electronic computers, the proposed NUTM will have a processor that’s made up of DNA or biological molecules capable of replicating endlessly. This means that if it gets stymied by a problem, all it has to do is replicate again and again until there are billions of cells all working on the solution.
To read more, click here.