When it comes to computers, humans have an insatiable
need for speed.
Yet with our current designs, we're starting to approach some fundamental limits on how fast they can get.
Well, what if there was a different kind of computer? One that ran faster, used less energy, and all the while cut back on pollution
from electronic waste.
Well, that's all science, no fiction.
It's probably one of the weirder things you'll see in a science lab, especially in a lab making computer parts.
It's just processed store bought honey. It's off the shelf, a little cute bear so we can put it in photos. But for Zoe Templin and Mehdi Taneem,
this honey is key. Because it is cheap and it is easily accessible to everyone.
It also has natural chemical properties that make it a promising foundation
for a new kind of environmentally friendly computer component
being developed in the Pacific Northwest.
Electronics,
in general, produce so much toxic waste.
Like, it really is a devastating amount of electronic waste that occurs.
The world produces about 50,000,000
tons of electronic waste per year.
Only 20% is recycled,
meaning the other 80%
ends up in landfills.
Using honey instead of materials like silicon and computers
would make recycling easier and less toxic
because honey breaks down in water.
I would love to see this become
a stepping stone to having electronically
clean waste
than actually getting organic materials out into
your phone, into commercial use.
The computer part the team is building is something relatively new in the world of electronics.
It's called a memristor.
Memristor is a portmanteau of the words memory and resistor,
both essential for computers.
Honey has the chemical characteristics
needed to make memristors work. So they have a big,
molecule chains
in the material,
and we need those, molecule chains
in order for us to make our devices. The team also focused on honey because it's stable and doesn't spoil.
And unlike traditional computer materials,
producing it actually benefits the environment.
We are going to drop honey on it.
Templin uses a centrifuge
to spin the honey into a thin, even layer. It's thinner than her hair.
She'll make the memristor by sandwiching the honey between 2 metal electrodes.
You have metal
insulator
metal.
The memristor's combination of memory and electricity
resistance is unique in electronics,
but there's another place where this combo is quite common,
in our brains.
Our brains are full of nerve cells called neurons, and when we learn, our neurons create connections between each other. The points where the neurons connect are synapses.
When we hear a new piece of information, a small bridge is built across the synapse.
The bridge is our memory.
The more we hear the information repeated, the more robust that memory bridge becomes.
Our neurons and the synapse,
they process,
data and they store data at the same time.
This dual purpose is a huge deal and helps make our brains the most
efficient computers on the planet.
The Teams memristor works the same way. It builds bridges through the honey when exposed to certain levels of electricity.
That's the data processing.
When the electricity
stops flowing, the bridge remains intact.
That's the memory.
If you reverse the flow of electricity, the memory is wiped clean.
We are building systems of memory that are as efficient
as how the brain stores memory.
So we need to basically test to write the data
into the memory.
Then after that, we erase data.
The test will show whether their honey based memristor is able to learn and store memory like our synapses.
Maybe I think you need to move
the probe a little bit.
No contact.
Oh, there we go. They'll be able to track the honeymoon wrister's performance through a readout on the computer.
They power up the probes,
and the graph shows the bridge forming through the honey.
So now the data is written in the memory, then what we need is to erase the data.
They reverse the flow of electricity.
Basically, we want to burn our bridge. The bridge breaks down.
Beautiful. This is
this proves our Honey device is a memory. Yeah. So if you have a computer component that mimics a brain cell,
could you put a bunch of them together and get a computer that mimics a brain?
The answer is yes.
Right now, our device
simulate single
neuron, single synapse, but we want to integrate
those devices together
and, then this will
behave more like our,
our brain.
This is the idea behind neuromorphic computing,
a new revolution in computer design. It's a building block. Like, this is a synapse from my brain. So by combining millions of device like this, then I can build a neuromorphic chip, which can actually do the computation that a supercomputer can do, but within
100 times faster and using 1,000 times less energy.
Pretty much every computer we use is based on a design that's 80 years old,
the Von Neumann architecture.
In this design, the part of the computer that processes information
is separate from the part that stores it.
This conventional computing systems
consumes a tremendous
amount of energy.
They require time, so they are slower.
Neuromorphic computers solve this bottleneck in part by having the processor and storage all in one place.
I want my research to provide
a solution.
That is what the team is doing.
By developing a biodegradable
computer component made of honey
for a computer system that's more energy efficient than any we've ever seen,
the team is taking computers into a faster
and cleaner
new age.
I'm actually extremely fortunate to have been raised and grown up in the Pacific Northwest that cares about the environment
to this level where I can do research
that could truly help the environment
in a way that really hasn't been explored before.
We don't need a supercomputer to figure out that all science no fiction wouldn't be possible without the support of OPB members. Thanks.
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