Speeding up DNA computation with liquid droplets

Nanowerk  October 22, 2022 Bottom-up engineering of synthetic condensates advances our understanding of the organizing principle of condensates. It also enables the synthesis of artificial systems with novel functions. However, building synthetic condensates with a predictable organization and function remains challenging. Researchers in South Korea used DNA as a building block to create synthetic condensates that are assembled through phase separation. The programmability of intermolecular interactions between DNA molecules enabled the control over various condensate properties including assembly, composition, and function. Similar to the way intracellular condensates are organized, DNA clients were selectively partitioned into cognate condensates. They demonstrated how […]

Combining classical and quantum computing opens door to new discoveries

Science Daily  June 15, 2021 Variational quantum eigensolvers (VQEs) combine classical optimization with efficient cost function evaluations on quantum computers. An international team of researcher (Canada, Austria, Germany) proposed a new approach to VQEs using the principles of measurement-based quantum computation. This strategy uses entangled resource states and local measurements. They have presented two measurement based VQE schemes. The first introduces a new approach for constructing variational families. The second provides a translation of circuit to measurement-based schemes. Both schemes offer problem-specific advantages in terms of the required resources and coherence times. The algorithm offers high error tolerance, often an […]

Linear systems are the workhorse of modern computation

Quanta Magazine  March 8, 2021 For solving linear systems researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a technique that employs an enhanced version of the iterated guessing strategy: Instead of making just a single guess, their algorithm makes many guesses in parallel. This approach speeds up the search. The key feature to the algorithm’s ultimate success is that it makes the three initial guesses at random. Randomness ensures you do not accidentally end up biasing your search toward one part of the problem, potentially neglecting the space where the actual solution lies. They showed that the different strands […]

Magnetic whirls in confined spaces

Nanowerk  March 4, 2021 An international team of researchers (Germany, China) experimentally probed the dramatic influence of confinement on diffusion and study the skyrmion diffusion in confined geometries varying both the symmetry of the elements and the number of skyrmions within the element, studying the evolution from a sparse population to a fully lattice‐like situation and skyrmion population. In the triangular geometry, they found that the dynamics varies drastically for numbers of skyrmions that can form a regular order, thus being commensurate with the geometry, as compared to numbers of skyrmions that are incommensurate with the geometry. The findings confirm experimentally […]

Pushing computing to the edge by rethinking microchips’ design

EurekAlert  February 24, 2021 Two years ago, researchers at Princeton University fabricated a new chip designed to improve the performance of neural networks. The chip performed tens to hundreds of times better than other advanced microchips. But the chip’s major drawback was that it uses a very unusual and disruptive architecture as it needs to be reconciled with the massive amount of infrastructure and design methodology that we have and use today. Now the team has created software that would allow the new chips to work with different types of networks, allow the systems to be scalable both in hardware […]

Break it down: A new way to address common computing problem

Science Daily  August 5, 2020 The volume of data, inadequate computational resources to handle an oversized problem, security and privacy concerns are some of the challenges in solving large-scale linear inverse problems (LIP). Researchers at Washington University have developed the parallel residual projection (PRP), a parallel computational framework involving the decomposition of a large-scale LIP into sub-problems of low complexity and the fusion of the sub-problem solutions to form the solution to the original LIP. They analyzed the convergence properties of the PRP and accentuate its benefits through its application to complex problems of network inference and gravimetric survey. They […]

Computing with spins of light

Phys.org  January 21, 2020 In the XY model of a spin system used for solving complex problems particles form vortex-like patterns around multiple focal points. An international team of researchers (Japan, USA -Stanford University) improved an experimental set up that emulates the XY model by designing a laser system that generates pulses of light particles within a one-kilometer-long optical fiber cavity. The pulses generated 5,000 spins, i.e. flows of light particles going down 5,000 different drains, within the cavity. It enabled long simulations over several minutes within a stable system. This improves on previous oscillators that produced only 100 spins […]

Reorganizing a computer chip: Transistors can now both process and store information

Science Daily  December 9, 2019 Researchers at Purdue University used a semiconductor that has ferroelectric properties. This way two materials become one material so that the interface issues are not a problem. The result is a so-called ferroelectric semiconductor field-effect transistor, built in the same way as transistors currently used on computer chips. The material, alpha indium selenide has ferroelectric properties and a much smaller band gap, making it possible for the material to be a semiconductor without losing ferroelectric properties. The researchers have created a more feasible way to combine transistors and memory on a chip, potentially bringing faster […]

DARPA uses nature as a muse for new computing model

Defense Systems  August 9, 2019 Taking a cue from nature’s efficiency and precision, DARPA is looking for concepts that exploit the interplay between complex dynamical behaviors and intrinsic properties of materials to develop novel computing models for the purpose of tackling current hard computation problems, according to an Aug. 1 solicitation. The two-phase, 18-month program has two technical areas: theory and design, then application development…read more.

Virtually energy-free superfast computing invented by scientists using light pulses

Science Daily  May 15, 2019 An international team of researchers (Germany, USA- UC Santa Barbara, Russia, the Netherlands) utilized the efficient interaction mechanism of coupling between spins and terahertz electric field, which was discovered by the same team. They developed and fabricated a very small antenna on top of the magnet to concentrate and thereby enhance the electric field of light. This strongest local electric field was sufficient to navigate the magnetization of the magnet to its new orientation in just one trillionth of a second without increasing the temperature. Future storage devices would also exploit the excellent spatial definition […]