From: utzoo!decvax!cwruecmp!pearlmut
Newsgroups: net.arch
Title: Re: houxj.205: Re: Biochips... or bull chips?
Article-I.D.: cwruecmp.440
Posted: Wed Jan 26 16:36:46 1983
Received: Sat Jan 29 08:18:19 1983

The 100 million speedup estimate for Potato Chips is based on the idea of using
protiens as the individual switching elements, rather than transistor gates.
A molecule can twitch very quickly, and is very small, leading to extremely
high signal propogation speeds, and incredibly high densities.  Consider that
modern VLSI has feature sizes on the order of 1 um, about the diameter of a
yeast cell.  Think of the processing power in a yeast cell, and think of
getting all that power in a usable form, and you see why this would be so neat.

The idea is not to use entire cells as swithing elements or gates.  They are
much too slow, and quite unreliable.

By the way, shouldn't this discussion be on net.vlsi?

					Barak Pearlmutter,