Nanocomputing Trends, Directions and Applications

Abstract The quest for smaller and faster computers has been on ever since the first computer was made. The journey from SSI to VLSI and the consequent reduction in the physical size of the computer has been well documented. The making of faster computers is also well documented. Today we have very fast personal computers on the desktops and supercomputers for scientific computing and other complex applications. Demand for PCs and leading-edge performance was so strong for so long that we came to believe that Moores law created the industrys success. But Moores law is just an aggressive supply curve. We forgot that demand is a force of its own. For decades we had solutions based on generic micro-processor designs and brute-force miniaturization of transistors to improve the performance. Recently, ASICs and re-configurable microprocessors are finding their way into the market. However, they have not shaken off the basic computing model. Nanocomputing is a new paradigm that is promising to provide the speed and power of supercomputers at very small physical size. This paper explores the new paradigm of computing and its applications. The paper discusses five major trends in Nanocomputing.

1.

Introduction

Each new decade sees a new wave of innovative technology. Digital computers were invented in the mid-1940s. The inventions of the transistor and the integrated circuit resulted in their explosive growth. Experts in the 1950s thought that the world's computing needs could be supplied by half a dozen computers. The demand for Computers grew rapidly and the focus began to shift towards High Performance and High Return on Investment. Digital computers represent the world around them using ones and zeros. To deal with even simple data, such as the colors on a computer screen, a digital computer must use many ones and zeros. To manipulate this data, a digital computer uses a program, a sequence of tiny steps. Animating a picture may require a digital computer to execute millions of steps every second. But digital computers are limited by the "clock rate," the number of steps that can be executed in a second. There physics takes its toll: the clock rate cannot be made arbitrarily fast, for eventually the ones and zeros would have to travel through the computer faster than the speed of light. Electronics also limit digital computers. As digital chips are built with tens of millions of transistors, they consume increasing amounts of power, and the odds increase that a chip will be defective. Supercomputers are Computers designed solely for high performance. They are expensive and use cutting edge technology. The target applications are complex and highly parallel. With the availability of high performance multiprocessor the distinction between supercomputers and parallel computers is blurred. The applications of supercomputers range from high quality graphics, complex simulations, high speed transaction processing systems to virtual reality. Supercomputers are made using multiple high speed processors. The architectures include pipelined vector processors, array processors and systolic array processors. The traditional supercomputing model was one where users on workstations submitted their compute-intensive jobs to a large, expensive, common, shared compute resource in a batch environment. While the actual time it took for a task to complete may have been very small, the turn-around time for a task to be submitted, progress to the head of the batch queue, and finally get executed could be very large. The economies of these large, shared resources often meant that there were a large number of users, which in turn meant very long turn-around times. In fact, the utilization of the common, shared compute resource is inefficient since even compilation must be done frequently for lack of an object-code compatible environment on the user's desktop. Expensive vector hardware brings no value to compiling, editing, and debugging programs. Computer system vendors build machines in several different ways. There are good things and bad things about each type of architecture. The characteristics of typical supercomputing architectures include:

Vector & SMP architecture: the shared-memory programming model, which is the most intuitive way to program systems and the most portable way to write code. Message Passing: the traditional massively parallel architectures offer scalability for problems that are appropriate for this loosely coupled architecture. Workstations Clusters: economies of computing. Workstation clusters have the tremendous appeal of functioning as individual workstations by day and a compute cluster at night.

Supercomputing thus stems from innovative machine architectures. One of the major problems with parallel computing is that we have too many components to consider and that all these components must work in unison and efficiently if we are to get the major performance potential out of a parallel machine. This presents a level of complexity that makes this field frustrating and difficult.

Figure 1: The Fixed Costs (as diagonal lines) , Norman Christ, Columbia University, USA The 1990s saw digital processors become so inexpensive that a car could use dozens of computers to control it. Today just one Porsche contains ninety-two processors. According to Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future, changes just as dramatic will be caused by massive arrays of sensors that will allow computers to control our

environment. In Saffo's vision of the future, we will have smart rooms that clean themselves with a carpet of billions of tiny computer-controlled hairs. Airplanes will have wings with micromachine actuators that will automatically adjust to handle turbulence. These smart machines will require computers that can process vast amounts of sensor data rapidly, far faster than today's digital computers. High Performance Computing had several bottlenecks given below. 1. Host Computer Bottlenecks: CPU utilization, Memory limitations, I/O Bus Speed, Disk Access Speed 2. Network Infrastructure Bottlenecks: Links too small, Links congested, Scenic routing with specific path lengths, Broken equipment, Administrative restrictions 3. Application Behavior Bottlenecks: Chatty protocol, High reliability protocol, No run-time tuning options, Blaster protocol which ignores congestion. The innovations in having High Performance Computing facilities ushered in the Petaflops Era. 1.1 Analog Computing Everything Old is Becoming New

Analog computing systems, which include slide rules, have been used for more than a century and a half to solve mathematical equations. In the 1950s and 1960s electronic analog computers were used to design mechanical systems from bridges to turbine blades, and to model the behavior of airplane wings and rivers. The analog equivalent of the digital computer is a refrigerator-sized box that contains hundreds of special electronic circuits called operational amplifiers. On the front of the box is a plugboard, similar to an old-fashioned telephone switchboard that is used to configure the analog computer to solve different problems. The analog computer is not programmed, like a digital computer, but is rewired each time a new problem is to be solved. An analog computer can be used to solve various types of problems. It solves them in an analogous way. Two problems or systems are considered analogous if certain or all of their respective measurable quantities obey the same mathematical equations. The digital computing attempts to model the system as closely as possible by abstracting the seemingly desired features into a different space. Most general purpose analog computers use an active electrical circuit as the analogous system because it has no moving parts, a high speed of operation, good accuracy and a high degree of versatility. Digital computers replaced general purpose analog computers by the early 1970s because analog computers had limited precision and were difficult to reconfigure. Still, for the right kind of problem, such as processing information from thousands of sensors as fast as it is received, analog computers are an attractive alternative to digital computers. Because they simulate a problem directly and solve it in one step, they are faster than digital computers. Analog computer chips use less power and can be made much larger

than digital computer chips. Analog Computation model the system behavior and the relates the various parameters directly unlike the discreteness [which enforces a local view] inherent in digital computing. The author strongly opines that going back to Analog Computing may help us understand better and resolve the challenges posed by rapidly increasing complexity of the Computing Systems being developed. As a mater of fact, Artificial Neural Networks are being dubbed as "Super-Turing" computing models. 1.2 Artificial Intelligence A Paradigm Shift

Artificial Intelligence has been a significant Paradigm Shift which brought in brilliant researchers working on: Building machines that are able of symbolic processing, recognition, learning, and other forms of inference Solving problems that must use heuristic search instead of analytic approach Using inexact, missing, or poorly defined information - Finding representational formalisms to compensate this Reasoning about significant qualitative features of a situation Working with syntax and semantics Finding answers that are neither exact nor optimal but in some sense sufficient The use of large amounts of domain-specific knowledge The use of meta-level knowledge (knowledge about knowledge) to effect more sophisticated control of problem solving strategies

Table 1 below describes the component of Intelligence which eventually proved to be very restrictive. Artificial Neural Networks and Genetic Algorithms are providing some innovative implementation methodologies but remained far from the original goals of Artificial Intelligence. The internal world: cognition 1. processes for deciding what to do and for deciding how well it was done processes for doing what one has decided to do processes for learning how to do adaptation to existing environments the shaping of existing environments into new ones, the selection of new environments when old ones prove unsatisfactory

2. 3. 1. 2. 3.

The external world: perception and action

The integration of the internal and external worlds through experience

1. the ability to cope with new situations 2. processes for setting up goals and

for planning 3. the shaping of cognitive processes by external experience

Table 1: Components of Intelligence Nanocomputing is a totally new paradigm to enhance the computing speeds at tiny sizes. There are five perceptible trends in Nanocomputing. They are 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Quantum Computing Molecular Computing Biological Computing Optical Computing Nanotechnology Approach

The following sections briefly explain these trends and the applications of Nanocomputing.

2.

Quantum Computing

Traditional computer science is based on Boolean logic and algorithms. The basic variable is a bit with two possible values 0 or 1. The values of the bit are represented using the two saturated states off or on. Quantum mechanics offers a new set of rules that go beyond the classical computing. The basic variable now is a Qubit. A Qubit is represented as a normalized vector in two dimensional Hilbert space. The logic that can be implemented with Qubits is quite distinct from Boolean logic, and this is what has made quantum computing exciting by opening up new possibilities. The Quantum computer can work with a two-mode logic gate: XOR and a mode we'll call QO1 (the ability to change 0 into a superposition of 0 and 1, a logic gate which cannot exist in classical computing). In a quantum computer, a number of elemental particles such as electrons or photons can be used (in practice, success has also been achieved with ions), with either their charge or polarization acting as a representation of 0 and/or 1. Each of these particles is known as a quantum bit, or qubit, the nature and behavior of these particles form the basis of quantum computing. One way to think of how a qubit can exist in multiple states is to imagine it as having two or more aspects or dimensions, each of which can be high (logic 1) or low (logic 0). Thus if a qubit has two aspects, it can have four simultaneous, independent states (00, 01, 10, and 11); if it has three aspects, there are eight possible states, binary 000 through 111, and so on. The two most relevant aspects of quantum physics are the principles of superposition and entanglement.

2.1

Superposition

A qubit is like an electron in a magnetic field. The electron's spin may be either in alignment with the field, which is known as a spin-up state, or opposite to the field, which is known as a spin-down state. Changing the electron's spin from one state to another is achieved by using a pulse of energy, such as from a laser - let's say that we use 1 unit of laser energy. But what if we only use half a unit of laser energy and completely isolate the particle from all external influences? According to quantum law, the particle then enters a superposition of states, in which it behaves as if it were in both states simultaneously. Each qubit utilized could take a superposition of both 0 and 1. Thus, the number of computations that a quantum computer could undertake is 2^n, where n is the number of qubits used. But how will these particles interact with each other? They would do so via quantum entanglement. 2.2 Entanglement

Particles (such as photons, electrons, or qubits) that have interacted at some point retain a type of connection and can be entangled with each other in pairs, in a process known as correlation. Knowing the spin state of one entangled particle - up or down - allows one to know that the spin of its mate is in the opposite direction. Even more amazing is the knowledge that, due to the phenomenon of superpostition, the measured particle has no single spin direction before being measured, but is simultaneously in both a spin-up and spin-down state. The spin state of the particle being measured is decided at the time of measurement and communicated to the correlated particle, which simultaneously assumes the opposite spin direction to that of the measured particle. This is a real phenomenon (Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance"), the mechanism of which cannot, as yet, be explained by any theory - it simply must be taken as given. Quantum entanglement allows qubits that are separated by incredible distances to interact with each other instantaneously (not limited to the speed of light). No matter how great the distance between the correlated particles, they will remain entangled as long as they are isolated. Taken together, quantum superposition and entanglement create an enormously enhanced computing power. Where a 2-bit register in an ordinary computer can store only one of four binary configurations (00, 01, 10, or 11) at any given time, a 2-qubit register in a quantum computer can store all four numbers simultaneously, because each qubit represents two values. If more qubits are added, the increased capacity is expanded exponentially. Quantum computing is thus not a question of merely implementing the old Boolean logic rules at a different physical level with different set of components. New Software and Hardware that take advantage of the novel quantum features can be devised. There is no direct comparison between information content of a classical bit that can take two discrete values and a qubit that can take any value in a two dimensional complex Hilbert space. Quantum gates represent general unitary transformations in the Hilbert space, describing interactions amongst qubits. Reversible Boolean logic gates are easily

generalized to quantum circuits by interpreting them as the transformation rules for the basis states. In addition there are gates representing continuous transformations in the Hilbert space. Almost any two qubit quantum gate is universal. Some of the problems with quantum computing are as follows:

Interference - During the computation phase of a quantum calculation, the slightest disturbance in a quantum system (say a stray photon or wave of EM radiation) causes the quantum computation to collapse, a process known as decoherence. Error correction - Because truly isolating a quantum system has proven so difficult, error correction systems for quantum computations have been developed. Qubits are not digital bits of data, thus they cannot use conventional (and very effective) error correction, such as the triple redundant method. Given the nature of quantum computing, error correction is ultra critical - even a single error in a calculation can cause the validity of the entire computation to collapse. There has been considerable progress in this area, with an error correction algorithm developed that utilizes 9 qubits (1 computational and 8 correctional). More recently, there was a breakthrough by IBM that makes do with a total of 5 qubits (1 computational and 4 correctional). Output observance - Closely related to the above two, retrieving output data after a quantum calculation runs the risk of corrupting the data.

The foundations of quantum computing have become well established. Everything else required for its future growth is under exploration. That includes quantum algorithms, logic gate operations, error correction, understanding dynamics and control of decoherence, atomic scale technology and worthwhile applications. Quantum computers might prove especially useful in the following applications:

Breaking ciphers Statistical analysis Factoring large numbers Solving problems in theoretical physics Solving optimization problems in many variables

3.

Molecular Computing

Feynman realized that the cell was a molecular machine and the information was processed at the molecular level. All cellular life forms on earth can be separated into two types, those with a true nucleus, eukaryotes (plants, animals, fungi and protests) and those without a true nucleus, prokaryotes or bacteria. Bacteria are usually unicellular and very much smaller than eukaryotic cells. Prokaryotic cells are much better understood than the eukaryotic cells. The fundamental unit of all cells is the gene.

A gene is made up of DNA which acts as the information storage system. DNA consists of two antiparallel strands of alternating sugar (deoxyribose) and phosphate held together by hydrogen bonds between nitrogenous bases, attached to the sugar. There are four bases : Adenine (A), Guanine (G), Cytosine (C) and Thymine (T). A typical DNA structure is shown in figure 1. Hydrogen bonding can occur only between specific bases i.e. A with T and G with C. DNA encodes information as a specific sequence of the nitrogenous bases in one strand. The chemical nature of DNA is such that it is very easy to make a precise copy of the base sequence. The process of DNA replication is not spontaneous. There have to be nucleotides present. The agents of synthesis of nucleotides and DNA are enzymes which are made up of proteins. There is an intermediate molecule involved in the transformation. This molecule is messenger RNA (mRNA). The DNA is converted into RNA by a process called transcription. RNA in turn generates proteins through a process called translation. A very important part of cell as a molecular machine is the fact that gene expression is controlled. In bacteria all aspects of gene expression can be subject to control. Transcription can be switched on or switched off. In bacteria the two major control points are regulation of transcription initiation and control of enzyme activity.

Figure 1 : DNA Structure

An aspect of molecular machines is the intrinsic unreliability. One cannot predict the behaviour of one molecule. In 1994, Adleman demonstrated how a massively-parallel random search may be implemented using standard operations on the strands of DNA. For molecular computers to become a reality the molecules have to be intrinsically selfrepairing i.e they have to be living. Consider the traveling salesman problem. Suppose you want to start at Atlanta and end up at Elizabeth, NJ, while visiting three other cities (Boston, Chicago, Altoona) once each. The number of connections between cities is variable: any given city might or might not be connected to any other city. The question is: in what order do you visit these cities such that you visit each one once and only once? The first step is to give each city _two_ four-letter names, each representing a sequence of four nucleotides (adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine; hereafter, a, g, c, and t). The bases are chosen at random. For the sake of clarity, the first name is in upper case and the second in lower case. The change in case has no other meaning. Atlanta = ACTTgcag Boston = TCGGactg Chicago = GGCTatgt ... The second step is to assign 'flight names' for those cities that have direct connections, using the first set of names to signify arrivals and the second to signify departures: Dep. Arv. flights Dep. Arv. Flights Atlanta -> Boston = gcagTCGG Boston -> Chicago = actgGGCT Boston -> Atlanta = actgACTT Atlanta -> Chicago = gcagGGCT ... Each of the four nucleotides bonds with one and only one other 'complement' base. Specifically, a bonds with t, and c with g. Each of the citynames therefore has a complement: Atlanta (original name) ACTTgcag Atlanta (complement) TGAAcgtc Boston (original name) TCGGactg Boston (complement) AGCCtgac

The flight names and the cityname complements are then ordered from a gene vendor and mixed together. Now imagine that a molecule coding for a flight from Atlanta to Boston gcagTCGG - bumps into a complement for the Boston cityname.

You get a structure that looks like: g c a gTCGC | | | | AGCCtgac If that assemblage bumps into a molecule representing a flight from Boston to Chicago (actgGGCT) the structure will grow as follows: g c a gTCGCactgGGCT | | | || | | | AGCCt g a c And so on and so on. The next step is to find and read the strand(s) encoding the answer. First, techniques are available that allow strands to be filtered according to their end-bases, allowing the removal of strands that do not begin with Atlanta and end with Elizabeth. Then the strands are measured (through electrophoretic techniques) and all strands not exactly 8x5 bases long are thrown out. Third, the batch of strands is probed for each cityname in turn. After each filtration the strands not containing that cityname are discarded. At the end you have a small group of strands that begin with Austin and end with Elizabeth, have every cityname in their length, and are five citynames long. These strands represent the solution, or equivalent solutions. The answer is read by sequencing the strand. We could use two aspects of bacteria to carry out computations : gene switch cascades and metabolism. We need to generate such cascades or metabolic pathways that do not interfere with the normal cellular functions. At present it is possible to generate gene switch cascades at will but not metabolic pathways.

4.

Biological Computing

Life is nanotechnology that works. It is a system that has many of the characteristics theorists seek. The role of biology in the development of nanotechnology is key because it provides guiding principles and suggests useful components. A key lesson from biology is the scale of structural components. The lower energies involved in non-covalent interactions make it much more convenient to work on the nanometer scale utilizing the biological principle of self-assembly. This is the ability of molecules to form well structured aggregates by recognizing each other through molecular complementarity. The specificity, convenience and programmability of DNA complementarity are exploited in Biological computing. There are two major technical issues. One is positional control (holding and positioning molecular parts to facilitate assembly of complex structures) and the other is selfreplication.

The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology describes how the genetic information we inherit from our parents is stored in DNA, and that information is used to make identical copies of that DNA and is also transferred from DNA to RNA to protein. A property of both DNA and RNA is that the linear polymers can pair one with another, such pairing being sequence specific. All possible combinations of DNA and RNA double helices occur. One strand DNA can serve as a template for the construction of a complementary strand, and this complementary strand can be used to recreate the original strand. This is the basis of DNA replication and thus all of genetics. Similar templating results in an RNA copy of a DNA sequence. Conversion of that RNA sequence into a protein sequence is more complex. This occurs by translation of a code consisting of three nucleotides into one amino acid, a process accomplished by cellular machinery including tRNA and ribosomes. Although it is possibly true in theory that given a protein sequence one can infer its properties, current state of the art in biology falls far short of being able to implement this in practice. Current sequence analysis is a painful compromise between what is desired and what is possible. Some of the many factors which make sequence analysis difficult are discussed below. As noted above, the difficulty of sequencing proteins means that most protein sequences are determined from the DNA sequences encoding them. Unfortunately, the cellular pathway from DNA to RNA to Protein includes some features that complicates inference of a protein sequence from a DNA sequence.

Many proteins are encoded on each piece of DNA, and, so when confronted with a DNA sequence, a biologist needs to figure out where the code for a protein starts and stops. This problem is even more difficult because the human genome contains much more DNA than is needed to encode proteins; the sequence of a random piece of DNA is likely to encode no protein whatsoever. The DNA which encodes proteins is not continuous, but rather is frequently scattered in separate blocks called exons. Many of these problems can be reduced by sequencing of RNA (via cDNA) rather than DNA itself, because the cDNA contains much less extraneous material, and because the separate exons have been joined in one continuous stretch in the RNA (cDNA). There are situations, however, where analysis of RNA is not possible and the DNA itself needs to be analyzed. Although a much greater fraction of RNA encodes protein than does DNA, it is certainly not the case that all RNA encodes protein. In the first case, there can be RNA up- and down-stream of the coding region. These non-coding regions can be quite large, in some cases dwarfing the coding region. Further, not all RNAs encode proteins. Ribosomal RNA (rRNA), transfer RNA (tRNA), and the structural RNA of small nuclear ribonucleoproteins (snRNA) are all examples of non-coding RNA.

By and large, global, complete solutions are not available for determining an encoded protein sequence from a DNA sequence. However, by combining a variety of computational approaches with some laboratory biology, people have been fairly successful at accomplishing this in many specific cases. There are two primary approaches: 1. Cellular gates 2. Sticker based computation

4.1

Cellular gates

In this method, we can build a large number of logic gates within a single cell. We use proteins produced within a cell as signals for computation and DNA genes as the gates. The steps of producing a protein is as follows: 1. The DNA coding sequence (gene) contains the blueprint of the protein to produce. 2. When a special enzyme complex called RNA polymerase is present, the gene copies portions of it to an intermediate form called mRNA. The RNA polymerase controls which portions of gene are copied to mRNA. mRNA copies, like proteins, rapidly degenerate. Consequently, mRNA copies must be produced at a continuous rate to maintain the protein level within a cell. 3. Ribosome of the cell produces the protein using the mRNA transcript. DNA Gene: Gene is a DNA coding sequence (a blueprint). It is accompanied by a control region, which is composed of non-coding DNA sequences as shown below. The control region has three important regions: 1. RNA polymerase binding region: This is the region where the special enzyme RNA polymerase binds. When this enzyme binds, it triggers the production of mRNA transcript. 2. Repressor binding region(s): These regHes typically overlap with the RNA polymerase binding region, so that if a repressor protein is bound to this region, it inhibits production of mRNA (since RNA polymerase cannot bind now). 3. Promoter binding region(s): These regions attract promoter proteins. When these proteins are bound, they attract RNA polymerase so mRNA production is facilitated.

4.1.1. How to model a gate using a cell

Signal: The level of a particular protein is used as the physical signal. This is analogous to the voltage in a conventional gate. There can be many signals (e.g., to represent variables x1, x2, etc) within one cell, since there are many proteins within a cell. The gate: A gene and its control sequence are used as a gate. A gene determines which protein (signal) is produced. The control sequence associated with the gene determines the type of gate (i.e., how to control it). There can be a large number of gates, since a cell can accommodate many genes. The following examples shows two gates:

Example 1: Inverter
NO Protein A (x2 = NOT x1)

Protein B (x1)

Gene (gate) Produces protein A With repressor region for protein B

When protein B is not present the gate will be producing protein A (assuming that RNA polymerase is always there). If we produce protein B, the gate will stop producing protein A. Therefore, this gate acts as a NOT gate (inverter).

Example 2: NOR gate

Protein B (x1) (Protein A) NOR (Protein B) (x3 = x2 NOR x1)

Protein C (x2)

Gene (gate) Produces protein A With a repressor region for protein A and another repressor region for protein C

Input: A gate within a cell can use two kinds of inputs: A gate (gene) can use a signal (protein) produced by another gate (gene) as its input. This is how the gates within the cell are networked. A gate (gene) can use a signal (protein) produced within the cell as a response to a stimulus (like illumination, a chemical environment, the

concentration of specific intracellular chemical) outside the cell. This is how gates in different cells can be connected. Output: A gate within a cell can produce two kinds of outputs A gate (gene) can produce a signal (DAN binding protein) that can be used by other gates as input. A gate (gene) can produce enzymes which effect reactions like motion, illumination or chemical reactions that can be sensed from the outside of the cell.

4.2

Sticker Based Model

This method uses DNA strands as the physical substrate to represent information. A DNA strand is composed of a sequence of regions termed as A, T, C, and G. One of each such region shows affinity to another region as shown below: A C T G

Consequently, if we have two DNA strands containing the forms ATCGG and TAGCC, they will stick together as: T A G C C A T C G G We use the above fact to perform computing as described below.

4.2.1 Information Representation

We divide a DNA strand to K bases with each base of size M as shown below. We can decide the size of M depending on the amount of combinations we want to represent.
a t DNA memory strands c g g 0 1 t a g c c t c a 0 0 c g t t a g c a c t 0 1 g a

a t

c g g

t c a

t a g c a c t

Fig. 2: (top) DNA memory strand with no stickers attached, (bottom) same DNA memory strand with stickers attached to the first and third bit regions

If the corresponding sticker of the base is attached to it as shown in Fig. 1, we treat that bit as set (i.e., bit =1). Otherwise the bit is cleared (bit = 0). From the figure, it should be clear that in the picture there are three bases, each of length 5 shown for both memory strands. The top DNA memory strand with no stickers represents the bit sequence 0002 and the strand with stickers placed on the first and third bases represents the bit sequence 1012. We do computation by performing a series of 4 unique steps to the DNA strands. Those 4 steps are combine, separate, bit set, and bit clear. Biological computing does not scale well. It is very good for problems that have a certain very large size but the amount of DNA that is needed is exponential in growth. So, biological computing is very good at vast parallelism up to a certain size. It is very expensive, not very reliable, and it takes a long time to get the result. By altering DNA, which humans do not fully understand, we could possibly generate a disease or mutation on accident. There are also ethical issues to be considered. Two important areas of technology have been inspired by Biological Computing. They are Cyborgs and Emotion Machines. 4.1 Cyborgs

[Excerpted from: Gopal T V, Community Talk CSI Communications, April 2007 Theme: Cyborgs; Guest Editor: Daniela Cerqui ] The quest to understand the human brain got into the realms of Computer Science several decades back. Not entirely unrelated are the following set of really big questions one must answer to hopefully replicate the activities of human brain using technology in some form. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. What is Intelligence? What is life about? What is Thought? How did Language Evolve? What is Consciousness? Does GOD exist?

Even preliminary answers to these questions amenable to automation using technology are proving to be hard to come by. If the answers are available to such questions, we can have very interesting extensions to several human endeavors, which go beyond the present day activities done using computer-based automation. The technology support provided outside the human system in these areas may take a longer time. Cyborg is an innovation to enhance the capabilities of the human being in

some manner. The term cyborg is used to refer to a man or woman with bionic, or robotic, implants. There are two popular methods of making a Cyborg. One method is to integrate technology into organic matter resulting in robot-human. The other method is to integrate organic matter into technology resulting in human-robot. Cyborgs were well known in science fiction much before they became feasible in the real world.

4.2

Emotion Machine

Why Cant We have a thinking computer? A machine that performs about a million floating-point operations per second understand the meaning of shapes? We build a machine that learns from experience rather than simply repeat everything that has been programmed into it? A computer be similar to a person? The above are some of the questions facing computer designers and others who are constantly striving to build more and more intelligent machines. Human beings tend to express themselves using: Body language Facial expressions Tone of voice Words we choose

Emotion is implicitly conveyed. In psychology and common use, emotion is the language of a person's internal state of being, normally based in or tied to their internal (physical) and external (social) sensory feeling. Love, hate, courage, fear, joy, and sadness can all be described in both psychological and physiological terms. There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul. - Arnold Bennett (British novelist, playwright, critic, and essayist, 1867-1931) There are two major theories about Emotion. They are: Cognitive Theories: Emotions are a heuristic to process information in the cognitive domain. Two Factor theory: Appraisal of the situation, and the physiological state of the body creates the emotional response. Emotion, hence, has two factors.

Three major areas of Intelligent activity are influenced by emotions Learning Long-term Memory Reasoning Somatic Marker Hypothesis is proving to be very effective in understanding the relationship between Emotion and Intelligence. Real-life decision making situations may have many complex and conflicting alternatives : the cognitive processes would be unable to provide an informed option Emotion (by way of somatic markers) aid us (visualisable as a heuristic) - Reinforcing stimulus induces a physiological state, and this association gets stored (and later bias cognitive processing) Iowa Gambling Experiment was designed to demonstrate Emotion-based Learning. People with damaged Prefrontal Cortex (where the semantic markers are stored) did poorly. Marvin Minsky wrote a book titled Emotion Machine which defines such a machine as: An intelligent system should be able to describe the same situation in multiple ways (resourcefulness) such a meta-description is Panalogy. We now need metaknowledge to decide which description is fruitful for our current situation and reasoning. Emotion is the tool in people that switches these descriptions without thinking. A machine equipped with such meta-knowledge will be more versatile when faced with a new situation. Minsky outlines the book as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. "We are born with many mental resources." "We learn from interacting with others." "Emotions are different Ways to Think." "We learn to think about our recent thoughts." "We learn to think on multiple levels." "We accumulate huge stores of commonsense knowledge." "We switch among different Ways to Think." "We find multiple ways to represent things." "We build multiple models of ourselves."

Machines of today dont need emotion. Machines of the future would need it to, Survive, Interact with other machines and humans, Learn, Adapt to circumstances. Emotions are a basis for humans to do all the above. Understanding the Biology of the Brain is the crux

in building biological computation models that thrive on the Emotions in Human Beings and their impact on Intelligence and Reasoning. An Emotion Machine named WE-4RII (Waseda Eye No. 4 Refined II) is being developed at the Waseda University, Japan. This machine simulates six basic emotions: Happiness, Fear, Surprise, Sadness, Anger and Disgust. It recognizes certain smells and detects certain types of touch. It uses three personal computers for communication and it is only a preliminary model of the Emotion Machine envisaged by Marvin Minsky.

5.

Optical Computing

Compared to light, electronic signals in chips travel very slowly. Moreover, there is no such thing as a short circuit with light. So beams could cross with no problem after being redirected by pin-point sized mirrors in a switchboard. Optical computing was a hot research area in the 1980s. However, the progress slowed down due to the nonavailability of materials to make optochips. Currently electro-optical devices are available with the limitations imposed by the electronic components. Optical Computing is back in the reckoning thanks to the availability of new conducting polymers to make components many times faster than their silicon counterparts. Light does not need insulators. One can send dozens or hundreds of photon streams simultaneously using different color frequencies. Light beams are immune to electromagnetic interference or cross talk. Light has low loss in transmission and provides large bandwidth. Photonic devices can process multiple streams of data simultaneously. A computation that requires 11 years on electronic computers could require less than one hour on an optical one. Figure 3 and Figure 4 give the all optical building blocks for computing.

Figure 3 : The schematic of an all optical AND Gate

Figure 4 : The schematic of an all optical NAND Gate

6.

Nanotechnology Approach

Carbon nanotubes, long, thin cylinders of carbon, were discovered in 1991 by S. Iijima. A carbon nanotube is a long, cylindrical carbon structure consisting of hexagonal graphite molecules attached at the edges. The nanotube developed from the so-called fullerene, a structure similar to the way geodesic domes, originally conceived by R. Buckminster Fuller, are built. Because of this, nanotubes are sometimes called buckytubes. A fullerene is a pure carbon molecule composed of at least 60 atoms of carbon. Because a fullerene takes a shape similar to a soccer ball or a geodesic dome, it is sometimes referred to as a buckyball after the inventor of the geodesic dome, Buckminster Fuller, after whom the fullerene is more formally named. Current work on the fullerene is largely theoretical and experimental. Some nanotubes have a single cylinder [single wall nanotube]; others have two or more concentric cylinders [multiple wall nanotube]. Nanotubes have several characteristics: wall thickness, number of concentric cylinders, cylinder radius, and cylinder length. Some nanotubes have a property called chirality, an expression of longitudinal twisting. Because graphite can behave as a semiconductor, nanotubes might be used to build microscopic resistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes, or transistors. Concentric nanotubes might store electric charges because of capacitance among the layers, facilitating the construction of high-density memory chips. Much progress has been achieved in the synthesis of inorganic nanotubes and fullerenelike nanoparticles of WS2 and MoS2 [Tungsten and Molybdenum Sulphides] over the last few years. Synthetic methods for the production of multiwall WS2 nanotubes by

sulfidizing WO3 nanoparticles have been described and further progress is underway. A fluidized-bed reactor for the synthesis of 20-50 g of fullerene-like WS2 nanoparticles has been reported. The detailed mechanism of the synthesis of fullerene-like MoS2 nanoparticles has been elucidated. There are two big hurdles to overcome for nanotube-based electronics. One is connectibility - it's one thing making a nanotube transistor, it's another to connect millions of them up together. The other is the ability to ramp up to mass production.

7.

Applications

Nanocomputing is an inter-disciplinary field of research. Carbon nanotubes hold promise as basic components for nanoelectronics - they can be conductors, semiconductors and insulators. IBM recently made the most basic logic element, a NOT gate, out of a single nanotube, and researchers in Holland are boasting a variety of more complex structures out of collections of tubes, including memory elements. There are two big hurdles to overcome for nanotube-based electronics. One is connectibility - it's one thing making a nanotube transistor, it's another to connect millions of them up together. The other is the ability to ramp up to mass production. By choosing materials so that they naturally bond with each other in desired configurations you can, in theory, mix them up in a vat under carefully controlled conditions and have the electronic components assemble themselves. Carbon nanotubes do not lend themselves to such approaches so readily, but can be reacted with or attached to other substances, including antibodies, so that self-assembly becomes a possibility. However, it is not that simple. The sorts of structures that constitute an electronic circuit are far too complex, varied and intricate to be easily created through self-assembly. Nanocomputers have wide ranging applications in Life Sciences, Robotics and Power systems.

8.

Conclusions

Nanocomputing is an inflection point in the advancement of technology. The research in this area is progressing rapidly. Till date the basic principles have been crystalized. It may be a decade from now when the fruits of Nanocomputing reach the common man.

9.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

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