If you’re a numerically-inclined person, at some point you may have run across a problem that faces everyone who uses a computer. If you haven’t heard of Moore’s Law by now, you’re not in the loop. But for people who have paid attention, you might have thought about running out the numbers. When you double anything long enough, you eventually run out of whatever you’re doubling. That just speaks to how powerful doubling actually is in the grand scheme of things. Anyway, for those who have run the numbers–and for those who haven’t, you’ll now know–it’s patently obvious that silicon’s performance capabilities are nearing their physical limitations. In a matter of years, silicon will essentially hit the wall, and computers will either stagnate, or morph onto another medium.
Enter DNA-based computers, which seem like the next generation’s best hope. DNA is incredibly fast and powerful for its size. The numbers are even more staggering than the speed at which calculations presently occur on the best of supercomputers. Imagine a computer the size of the change in your pocket doing more calculating than all the world’s supercomputers running in parallel today. It gets kind of mind boggling to think about it, because with that sort of computing power, code-breaking will become child’s play.
Carrying around a six pound laptop computer will be a bit silly. Hook up a DNA computer to a holographic image projector, and you’ll have the ultimate in portability and power. Computers of the future will be practically invisible as compared to the machines of today. But at what cost? Strangely, they could cost producers less to make, as DNA is found everywhere, unlike silicon. This cost advantage may not trickle immediately to consumers though, as manufacturers will probably cite the need to re-train labor forces. But the speeds will be worth the price!