Protein-Powered Biocomputer is Only as Big as a Book

Supercomputers are incredibly important, especially when it comes to research and performing incredibly complex calculations. However, supercomputers are notorious for using a lot of energy and taking up a lot of space, not to mention the fact that they’re incredibly expensive. However, sources indicate that a multi-university team of researchers has managed to create a powerful protein-powered biocomputer that is only about as big as a book. According to Lund University, this computer could become incredibly useful for cryptography and “mathematical optimization,” and that’s because biocomputers operate in parallel as opposed to traditional computers that work in sequence.

When it comes to power, this product needs less than one percent of the power used by a traditional transistor in order to do a calculation step. What’s arguably even more impressive is the fact that this product is so much smaller when compared to regular supercomputers such as IBM’s Watson, which includes 90 server modules. Even though its problem-solving capabilities are rather limited for now, the ATP-powered biocomputer has great potential for scalability, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it perform much more complex tasks in the near future.

“Our approach has the potential to be general and to be developed further to enable the efficient encoding and solving of a wide range of large-scale problems.”