"DNA Scheme Builds Computers"

Technology Research News (01/19/05); Patch, Kimberly

Computers fabricated from self-assembling DNA promise to deliver dramatically more power efficiency and processing speed in a much smaller and cheaper package, and researchers at Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Rambus have taken a significant step toward this vision with the construction of two computer architectures from DNA. The architectures employ single-strand molecules of artificial DNA with silicon rods on their ends that organize into circuit patterns, with the junctions between molecules metal-plated to form the circuitry. This is a departure from DNA computing research, in which the engineered strands represent computations. One architecture boasts a decoupled array-multiplexer design in which processors communicate solely via a central control unit, while the other uses an oracle design involving a computer synthesized for a specific problem using DNA to match question-answer pairs. Both architectures are simple parallel processing schemes that could be tapped to process large optimization problems such as the classic "traveling salesman" dilemma. Duke professor Chris Dwyer notes that redundancy is designed within the nanoelectronic circuitry to handle expected errors in the self-assembly process. The researchers' work was sponsored by the National Science Foundation and was featured in the Oct. 28, 2004 edition of Nanotechnology. Dwyer estimates that the development of a proof-of-concept DNA computer will take five to 10 years, while a practical DNA computer is over a decade away.

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