Fluid Logic Chips

Doc Ruby writes "Colorado researchers 'have constructed microfluidic gates that use the relative flow resistance of liquid to carry out the basic logic operations NOT, AND, OR, XOR, NOR and NAND. The researchers have also combined a pair of gates into a half adder, which carries out half the operation of addition.' All CPUs processing binary logic are made of these types of gates, but usually execute as flows of electrons in wires, not fluids in tubes. Will this advance revolutionize chemistry and computing the way electric gates revolutionized electronics and computing? Will 'fluid programmers' give new meaning to "flowchart"?"

Re:Redundant Systems and Fluid Dynamics

[deglr6328]

Why would deep space probes use microfluidic logic processors? They may, on the other hand, be very useful for carrying out microchemical analytical techniques with a limited amount of reagent for things like life detection and geochemistry experiments on future planetary(Mars probably) rovers though.

Advanced? This is 50's technologies

[nurb432]

The application of fluidics has been around for ages.. even before tubes and 'electronic logic' we had fluidics.. both analog and digital.

Sure its still cool, but dont call it 'advanced'..

Geesh..

Cool Running

[overshoot]

Hate to break the news, but unless someone finds a way to use superfluids (lossless flow fluids, like liquid helium) for these, they're gonna take power to run.

At a rough guess from scaling theory, they're gonna take several orders of magnitude more energy/bit than electronic gates.

Re:How fast?

[forkboy]

Electrons dont move through copper at the speed of light. However, they do move faster than sound does through a fluid.

Re:How fast?

[grumpygrodyguy]

Will this advance revolutionize chemistry and computing the way electric gates revolutionized electronics and computing? Will 'fluid programmers' give new meaning to "flowchart"?"

How fast could this ever be? Neat, but I dunno how this could ever be put to a practical use. Cool hack none the less.

In all likelyhood this will never be used as a replacement for silicon. It's much more likely that stuff like this will be used in bioinformatics & pharmacuetical circles in order to perform massively parallel tests on different molecular combinations.

If there are over 1,000,000 molecular permutations of a particular family of drugs(or DNA). Perhaps this kind of computer could rapidly cycle through all such combinations. Maybe the testing reaction could be performed with a liquid-mechanical ALU of sorts. Then the results could be stored in a liquid memory bank where they could be reviewed. Perhaps indicator dyes, or electrical dyes could be used to signal positive/negative results. *shrug*

Re:How fast?

[Detritus]

I mean the speed of electromagnetic radiation, not electrons. Which is in the neighborhood of 0.6c in coaxial cable.

Re:How fast?

[spectecjr]

I think you mean the speed of electrons. Electrons can't travel the speed of light (in a vacuum)

No, he means the speed of light. Electron flow speed has nothing to do with how fast electronic circuits can perform operations; it's the EM wave that is important, not the actual electronics themselves.

Think about it... you average processor speed is so fast that it's many bajillion times faster than the electrons can actually move. The clock signal is NOT transmitted as electrons - it simply can't be.

I swim the body fluidic.

[Doc Ruby]

That could depend on the operations. In the electronic paradigm, fast CPUs process data in parallel, integrated across much slower networks, their messages processed by routers on a much higher symbolic level than processed in the CPUs. A possible fluidics architecture might process chemical reactions which code their results in their products, which are flags for the fluidic processor valve. So networks of partial results can be processed by these CPUs. There are many computational chemistry applications which could be complementary to this kind of processor, with fluids merely the medium which they chemistry conveniently produces, and these chips are suited to process. There's nothing uniquely informational about electrons; they're just the tiny tool we had mastered when we started applying the mechanics of info theory. Now we can harness our latent fluidics techniques, crossbred with our electronic techniques, for a hybrid that can use the most tractable properties of both.

Additionally, humans are more chemical than electronic. Even our neurology, often metaphorically "electric", is really an ion pump. All electronics require lots of adapters to couple with our senses, either chemical, optical or mechanical (including sound). These fluidics are in the same domain as our own primary physical existence. So integrating them with our biology might be more direct. Implants, sensors, medicine, all the much more personal tech applications might be more available to microfluidics than they've been to alien electronics. Surf's up!

Re:How fast?

[imgod2u]

Yes, however, but the same argument, electrons don't neccessarily need to flow too far inside an electric circuit. Merely the shift in electric field is neccessary to indicate an on (5V let's say) or off(0V) state. Very little current actually needs to flow. Changes in the electric field propogates at the speed of light, so modern CPU's do, indeed, operate at the speed of light.

Uh, minor nit.

[chadjg]

Uhh, according to some random website [hofstra.edu]

The compressibility of water is .0000034 lb/ft2. For a change in pressure of one pound per square inch, water is only compressed by about 3 one-millionths of its original volume.

However, at very large volumes, this small compression can become significant. For example, if water were truly incompressable, the oceans would stand about 100 feet higher than they do today. Compression of water in the ocean basins reduces global sea level by 100 feet.

I know the macro and micro worlds are quite different, but water does compress, and pipes and hoses do stretch, therefore there must be some delay in the propagation of the pressure wave, right?

Speaking from some minor experience with fire hoses and associated equipment, slamming valves on and off with a relatively incompressible fluid raises holy hell with fittings, pumps and hoses. It's called a "water hammer," and the effects can be costly. I'm not quite sure if this would be a problem in a microsopic array.

Im amazed how....

[Creepy Crawler]

Dumb people here are....

First off, electronics can be made EMP-proof, and a few ways at that.

1: Surround COMPLETELY the device with shielding, ala TEMPEST. Ground the shielding.

2: Use EMP detecters around the object to detect incoming pulse. When slight spike is recorded, cut electricity and ground the chips. These "hardened" chips have a cutoff which crucial parts are grounded/ungrounded on accepting a signal.

3: Use electron tubes for the base part of the system. Connect e-tubes to tempest surrounded internal computer. Use self-grounding chips for best survivalibility.

Re:How fast?

[pVoid]

Perhaps this kind of computer could rapidly cycle through all such combinations.

You're completely missing the point. This machine is just a fluid implementation of a binary machine. In that respect, it has absolutely no logical difference from a silicon based digital machine.

I think you might be drawing some sort of paralel between the fact that Quantum computers can do many things in paralel, and the fact that this doesn't use electricity as a means of implementing classical digitial logic.

Quantum computers aren't just a different implementation of digital logic, in fact, there is nothing even remotely similar to the logic circuits you're used to in Q Computing.

If there's anything I can think of, these machines will be completely immune to EM interference. But aside from that, they will be regular computers that could eventually implement a RISC or CISC arch, and run linux or windows binaries.