Computing is no longer the sole preserve of engineers and programmers. Along with electronic engineers, chemists and biologists are likely to bring about some of the next great advances in computing.
In UCD, research has been under way for five years on how to grow computers from a solution in a jar. Dr Donald Fitzmaurice, director of the nanochemistry group, explains: "The plan is ultimately that you would have beakers of solutions, you'd mix them together and what precipitates out is an array of logic devices."
He does point out, however, that his team is taking its lead from somewhere other than traditional chemistry: "If you look around for examples of very complex things that can build themselves you really have to look no further than biology - which can design the most complex machines."
He also maintains that the development of these new systems has more than a scientific impact. "Our society has shown no indications that its desire for systems that can process more information faster is tapering off in any way, but the technology looks like it might taper off relatively soon. The key issue for society is moving from an information-based society to a knowledge-based society; producing insights rather than facts. And for that we need the technology."
This societal impact is being brought about by interdisciplinary research, according to Fitzmaurice: "What we're doing is bringing together synthetic chemistry, physics, scanning probe microscopy, a whole range of different technologies, to tackle one of the key problems of society - how are we going to handle volumes of information at the speeds society wants."
A team at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), also working on a chemical computer, is echoing this multidisciplinary approach. Working under Prof James Heath, the team earlier this year operated a functional logic gate based on a molecular switch, the first step on the way to a nanoscale molecular processor (see Computimes July 26th). According to Heath, the improvements this type of processor will bring will completely outshine the fastest silicon chip.
"Our real goal relates to the energy efficiency of a computer," says Heath. "The energy efficiency is really the fundamental metric of how good a computer can be. Theoretically, it should be possibly to carry out slightly more than a billion billion operations per second using just one watt of power."
The benefits from interdisciplinary research are not one-way, however. Scientists at Michigan University are embracing computers to help them understand evolution. In conjunction with the California Institute of Technology and UCLA, the team has created an artificial world inside a computer, in which computer programs take the place of living organisms. Working under Prof Richard Lenski, the team introduced two types of digital organisms, simple and complex. The simple organisms reproduce only, and the complex organisms reproduce as well as processing simple mathematical problems. Mutations are then introduced to the closed system, and the engineers change the environment to see which organisms flourish and which do not.
Essentially the project follows the same scientific protocols that a normal lab experiment does, except that the experiment is carried out digitally instead of on a petri dish. Lenski's team has already made significant discoveries that have yet to be tested on real-life systems of biological evolution. For example, the simple digital organisms are much more susceptible to the introduced mutations than their complex relatives.
While it may seem that the computer is simply a tool of science, many scientists would not agree. Christopher Adami is one of the physicists who helped to design the artificial life computer in which the organisms live, and he maintains that the experiment carries more significance than just uncovering the secrets of evolution.
"I think this is the first time we have convinced biologists that artificial life is not just a pipe dream, but is answering some fundamental questions about biology." Lenski agrees that the experiment also carries significance in the field of artificial intelligence. "Computer programs are becoming more and more complicated," he says. "We're at the point in some applications where it's hard for the human brain to tell the computer what we want it to do. One area of interest is whether one can employ computer programs that evolve through rewards to do assigned tasks without a human watching each step."