Cell-inspired electronics
A single cell in the human body is approximately 10,000 times more energy-efficient than any nanoscale digital transistor, the fundamental building block of electronic chips. In one second, a cell performs about 10 million energy-consuming chemical reactions, which altogether require about one picowatt (one millionth millionth of a watt) of power. MIT's Rahul Sarpeshkar is now applying architectural principles from these ultra-energy-efficient cells to the design of low-power, highly parallel, hybrid analog-digital electronic circuits. Such circuits could one day be used to create ultra-fast supercomputers that predict complex cell responses to drugs. They may also help researchers to design synthetic genetic circuits in cells. In his new book, Ultra Low Power Bioelectronics (Cambridge University Press, 2010), Sarpeshkar outlines the deep underlying similarities between chemical reactions that occur in a cell and the flow of current through an analog electronic circuit. He discusses how biological cells perform reliable computation with unreliable...