Computing, Sudoku-style

From PhysOrg.com:

Radul envisioned a new type of computer system that would handle multidirectional information flow automatically. Indeed, not only would it pass information forward and backward through stages of a multistage process, but it would pass data laterally, too: The results of one stage could be fed into, say, two others, which would attack a problem from different directions simultaneously, reconciling their answers before passing them on to the next stage. At that point, the stages of a process wouldn’t really be stages at all, but computational modules that could be arranged in parallel or in series, like elements in an electrical circuit. Programmers would simply specify how each module was connected to those around it, and the system would automatically pass information around until it found solutions that satisfied the constraints imposed by all the modules.

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Brain-like computing on an organic molecular layer

From PhysOrg.com:

Information processing circuits in digital computers are static. In our brains, information processing circuits—neurons—evolve continuously to solve complex problems. Now, an international research team from Japan and Michigan Technological University has created a similar process of circuit evolution in an organic molecular layer that can solve complex problems. This is the first time a brain-like "evolutionary circuit" has been realized.

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A Grand Unified Theory of Artificial Intelligence

From PhysOrg.com:

As a research tool, Goodman has developed a computer programming language called Church — after the great American logician Alonzo Church — that, like the early AI languages, includes rules of inference. But those rules are probabilistic. Told that the cassowary is a bird, a program written in Church might conclude that cassowaries can probably fly. But if the program was then told that cassowaries can weigh almost 200 pounds, it might revise its initial probability estimate, concluding that, actually, cassowaries probably can’t fly.

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Brain-Like Computer Closer to Realization

From PhysOrg.com:

Almost since computing began, scientists and technologists have been fascinated with the idea of a computer that works similarly to the human brain. In 2008, the first "memristor" was built, a device that is designed to behave in a manner that mimics the junctions betweens the neurons in the brain. However, until recently, the memristor was just a device. Now a group at the University of Michigan, led by Wei Lu, has demonstrated that the memristor can actually be used in computing. Their findings were published in Nano Letters: "Nanoscale Memristor Device as Synapse in Neuromorphic Systems."

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Research streamlines data processing to solve problems more efficiently

From PhysOrg.com:

Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a new analytical method that opens the door to faster processing of large amounts of information, with applications in fields as diverse as the military, medical diagnostics and homeland security.

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Trapped, Imaged Single Atoms May Enable Powerful Quantum Computing

Trapped, Imaged Single Atoms May Enable Powerful Quantum Computing from PhysOrg.com

Quantum computers have the potential to vastly out-perform present-day “classical” computers – if scientists can identify and manipulate promising quantum bits, or “qubits,” the basic information-storing units of a quantum computer.

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Massive Parallelization Made Easy?

Maryland Professor Creates Desktop Supercomputer from PhysOrg.com

A prototype of what may be the next generation of personal computers has been developed by researchers in the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering. Capable of computing speeds 100 times faster than current desktops, the technology is based on parallel processing on a single chip.

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Web Services 'Wizard' May Help Computers Do People's Work, Scientist Says

In the article Web Services 'Wizard' May Help Computers Do People's Work, Scientist Says, ScienceDaily reports:

Many web services exist today to allow people to find information on websites. But machines can't negotiate with other machines or engage in rudimentary deductive reasoning, as Petrie envisions. Computers use the standard Web Services Description Language (WSDL) put forth by W3C, a consortium established by web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, to understand input messages and deliver output messages in the same language.

But even if a standard way of describing computer services exists on the web, each description uses different terms. A person planning a trip can go to an airline website and find flight information. But machines charged with the same task fail. "Flight" may be abbreviated as "flt" on one carrier's website but as "flite" on another's.

"A human can look at those two words and know that must be the same thing, but a machine has no idea," Petrie says. That makes it difficult for web services to search multiple sites, retrieve desired information and present a menu of options.

Existing web services lack a common understanding of terms. The way to fix this, Petrie says, is to develop formal semantics, or logical expressions from which meaning can be inferred. The challenge is that some formalisms are expressive but too hard to compute, while others are easy to compute but insufficiently expressive.

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Next-generation, high-performance processor unveiled

Next-generation, high-performance processor unveiled from PhysOrg.com

The prototype for a revolutionary new general-purpose computer processor, which has the potential of reaching trillions of calculations per second, has been designed and built by a team of computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin.

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