{"id":693,"date":"2017-03-01T11:40:16","date_gmt":"2017-03-01T11:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mub.eps.manchester.ac.uk\/in-abstract\/?p=693"},"modified":"2017-07-25T09:51:20","modified_gmt":"2017-07-25T08:51:20","slug":"computing-exponentially-faster-implementing-a-non-deterministic-universal-turing-machine-using-dna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mub.eps.manchester.ac.uk\/in-abstract\/computing-exponentially-faster-implementing-a-non-deterministic-universal-turing-machine-using-dna\/","title":{"rendered":"Computing exponentially faster: implementing a non-deterministic universal Turing machine using DNA"},"content":{"rendered":"

New super-fast form of computer that grows as it computes<\/h4>\n

Researchers at The University of Manchester have for the first time demonstrated the feasibility of building a nondeterministic universal Turing machine (NUTM). The construction of NUTMs was previously regarded as impossible. Engineering NUTMs is important because, for the most important computational problems, NUTMs are exponentially faster than both electronic computers (universal Turing machines – UTMS), and quantum computers (QUTMs). The Manchester design exploits DNA\u2019s ability to replicate, and as all the computation is local (simple edits to strings) there is no need for communication between processors, and no need to order operations. The DNA string edits are implemented using molecular biology, and have been proved to work. In an NUTM the resource limitation is space, which contrasts with UTMs and QUTMs, where it is time. This fundamental difference enables an NUTM to trade space for time, which is significant for both theoretical computer science and physics. It is also of practical importance, for a desktop DNA NUTM could potentially utilize more processors than all the electronic computers in the world combined, and thereby outperform the world\u2019s current fastest supercomputer, while consuming a tiny fraction of its energy.<\/p>\n

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