Open a window and it speeds up
American boffins have worked out a way of running a
computer on air. Minsoung Rhee and Mark Burns at the University of
Michigan have built a machine that processes
binary signals by sucking air out of tubes to represent a 0, or letting
it back in to represent a 1.
A chain of such 1s and 0s flows through the processor's
channels, with pneumatic valves controlling the flow of the signals
between
channels. The pneumatic valves
are run by changing the air pressure in a small chamber below the air
channel, separated from the circuit by a flexible impermeable membrane.
When
the lower chamber is filled with air the membrane pushes upwards and
closes the
valve, preventing the binary signal flowing across one of the
processor's
junctions. Sucking out the air from the chamber reopens the valve by
forcing the membrane downwards, letting the signal move across the
junction. Using the valves, the boffins produced a variety of logic
gates, flip-flops and shift registers, which they linked together to
create a
working 8-bit microprocessor.
This makes for a processor which is just as powerful as a
1980s Nintendo only there are less games for it. Rhee and Burns think that their invention has the
potential to improve the "lab-on-a-chip" devices tipped to automate
complex chemistry tasks and improve disease testing, DNA profiling and other
lab jobs. Logic circuits could be used to control such experiments
and reduce running costs.