Manu Prakash, an Indian-origin scientist has developed World’s first water-based computer along with his whole team on 10 June 2015. He is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford University. The results were published in the journal Nature Physics. He developed the world’s first computer that operates on water droplets.
“In this work, we finally demonstrate a synchronous, universal droplet logic and control.” Prakash said:
Computer clocks are responsible for everything – smartphones, airplanes, internet. To develop a clock for a fluid-based computer is really a creative thinking. Manu Prakash and his team have a great ambitious mind. They aim to build a completely new class of computers that can easily control and manipulate physical matters.
“Imagine, when you run a set of computations wherein not only information is processed but also the physical matter is algorithmically manipulated. We have just made this possible at the mesoscale.” Prakash said:
This new water-based computer can do everything that a normal computer can. Thanks to the researchers for this great invention. This computer is little slower than the devices we are currently using. But, the team have better plans in their minds for further enhancing the device in vast ways.
In our regular computers, the role of the clock is to perfectly provide time of every single movement with the system. But, this water-based computer has something different. Manu Prakash’s team struggled hard to seek out something that would perform in the same way with water. Then, they came up with the idea of rotating magnetic field.
“Every time the field flips, the polarity of the bars reverses, drawing the magnetised droplets in a new, predetermined direction, like slot cars on a track,” The Stanford Press Release Explains. “Every rotation of the field counts as one clock cycle, like a second hand making a full circle on a clock face, and every drop marches exactly one step forward with each cycle.”