Modern computer chips handle data at the mind-blowing rate of some 10^13 bits per second. Neurons, by comparison, fire at a rate of around 100 times per second or so. And yet the brain outperforms the best computers in numerous tasks.
One reason for this is way computations take place. In computers, calculations occur in strict pipelines, one at a time.
In the brain, however, many calculations take place at once. Each neuron communicates with up to 1000 other neurons at any one time. And since the brain consists of billions neurons, the potential for parallel calculating is clearly huge.
Computer scientists are well aware of this difference and have tried in many ways to mimic the brain's massively parallel capabilities. But success has been hard to come by.
Today, Anirban Bandyopadhyay at National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, unveil a promising new approach. At the heart of their experiment is a ring-like molecule called 2,3-dichloro-5,6-dicyano-p-benzoquinone, or DDQ.
This has an unusual property: it can exist in four different conducting states, depending on the location of trapped electrons around the ring. What's more, it's possible to switch the molecule from one to state to another by zapping it with voltages of various different strengths using the tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope. It's even possible to bias the possible states that can form by placing the molecule in an electric field.
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