Grains of gold shine at computing

• Autores: Bas den Hond
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3040, 2015, pág. 12
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • A random assembly of gold nanoparticles can perform calculations normally reserved for neatly arranged patterns of silicon. The best microprocessors people can buy in a store now can do 10^sup 11^ operations per second, and use a few hundred watts, says Wilfred van der Wiel of the University of Twente in the Netherlands, but the human brain can do orders of magnitude more and uses only 10 to 20 watts which is a huge gap. Van der Wiel and his colleagues have hit the jackpot, using gold particles about 20 nm across to close the gap. The team was able to find voltages to transform the system into any one of the six "logic gates" that are the building blocks of computer chips. The algorithm even arrived at the combination for a higher-order logic unit, which can add two bits of information which shows that people can get to calculating ability by a completely different route, van der Wiel says.