The New Frontier

The new digital frontier is racing up on the horizon every year. Electronic miniaturization has increased right along with Moore's Law, which states that the amount of transistors in CPUs will double every two years, but that pace is now starting to become increasingly difficult.

There will come a point when the space needed for each transistor will occupy the same space as a single molecule on which that circuit is printed. The problem with this is self evident. It has been predicted that at some point in the future computer chips will have to move on to a state where they are no longer printed on silicon, but are fashioned out of some other material or operate according to principles not tied to electromagnetic theory.

Some attempts have been made at making DNA computers, which use "problems" phrased using the building blocks of DNA, but they have not yet matured to the point where they can be used for more complex operations. These computers solve the problems presented to them by matching base pairs on one string of DNA. Multiple strings of DNA are posed the "problem" simultaneously, instead of linearly as in traditional computing.

Perhaps the most interesting approach is that of quantum computing, or using the intrinsic properties of quantum particles to solve problems. The primary operator in these new circuits would be quarks, the fundamental building blocks of all particles such as neutrons and protons. These quarks group up in threes to form these particles, but they don't occur in the normal negative and positive varieties like electrons and protons. Instead, they have charges such as 2/3 positive, 1/3 negative. 2/3 positive particles are called "up type" and 1/3 negatives are called "down type". They also occur in three flavors: up, top, and charmed, which are all positive, and their "down type" negative conterparts: down, bottom, and strange.

I, without understanding complex quantum mechanics, have no idea how these kinds of circuits will be built or operate, but my imagination allows for all sorts of strange combinations. I have been trained in electronic circuit theory, so I have come up with several alternative configurations for how these new circuits would work, but they would not follow all the traditional rules. In fact, new rules would have to be invented to incorporate these new types of particles which, effectively, require entirely new components.

This project is an attempt to dream up these new rules based on my understanding of traditional circuits, but which still follow some sort of logical order. For example: a circuit under normal conditions has negative and positive potential that equal a total net charge of zero. Under the rules which I have imagined for quantum circuits, there could be a charmed potential as well as a strange, top, or bottom potential to balance out the 2/3 positive charge.

The rules for these circuits and their new components can be amazingly complex, requiring very strange sub-circuits to handle some of the more odd functions required in a system where any one circuit cannot be balanced by one potential over another, such as in the example above.

I'll keep posting my ideas on this blog and eventually begin showing some of my sample circuits.