Please log in.
Before you can vote, you need to register. Please log in or create an account.
Computer: CPU
H2O CPU   (+3, -2)  [vote for, against]
Massively intensive CPU power through hydrogen bonding

1. Hydrogen bonding and de-bonding takes place billions and billions of times per second in your average glass of water.

2. When a hydrogen bond forms between two water molecules, the redistribution of electrons changes the ability for further hydrogen bonding.

3. More specifically, variations in pressure during ice formation follow six known outcomes for various bonding conditions (ice-i, iii, v, vi, ix).

Given these three properties of water, it should be possible to create a massively capable CPU from cold water in nanotubes.

"Global state resets" should be possible using a large, generalised magnetic field. (Or so I've read, see links).

Local AND, OR, XOR, NOT, NAND, NOR, and XNOR gates should be possible by exploiting the known-in-advance effect of pressure and bonding in the nanotubes.

"We used to have water-cooled computers, now we have cooled-water computers!"
-- not_only_but_also, Feb 21 2005

Hydrogen bonding http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/hbond.html
[not_only_but_also, Feb 21 2005]

Ice iii and ice iv http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/ice_iii.html
[not_only_but_also, Feb 21 2005]

In a flash... http://news.bbc.co....ci/tech/4270297.stm
Hmm, combined with one of those 170dB sonic fridges... [AbsintheWithoutLeave, Feb 21 2005]

Quantum Consciousness http://www.valdosta...msmith/QuanCon.html
Some very smart people spent a lot of time making this incomprehensible... [ldischler, Feb 21 2005]

Well, let's see....

Responses that come to mind first include...

[chill out]

[this idea is all wet]

[cool your jets]

but I'm going to hold my cubed responses and let cooler heads prevail.....
-- normzone, Feb 21 2005


Water, water everywhere and not a drop to think.
-- FarmerJohn, Feb 21 2005


An issue here -- H2O sans any ionic contaminants is not currently feasible, and thought to be never attainable - we will never be able to manufacture a drop of JUST water. When a big ol' Iron or Sodium atom and it's attendant charge field moves into your nanotubes, who you gonna call?
-- ConsulFlaminicus, Feb 21 2005


The problem here is output. Leaving a cola in the freezer, the mass of sugary water soon forms feathery dendrites, massive patterns of H2O bonding, and the cola becomes sentient. In a moment it calculates the mass of the proton from first principles, sees the future all the way to the big crunch, swaps jokes with God. In a flash it gains the wisdom of the ages. Much later, sitting on the sofa, I remember. I rush to the kitchen and jerk open the freezer. The can is bulging. Shit! Left it in too long.
-- ldischler, Feb 21 2005


lol.

love the line of thought. human interface=possible bottleneck?
-- Sp@rkp|ug, Feb 22 2005


There's an interesting chapter in Feynman: "The pleasure of finding things out". He talks about the future of computing, using some kind of brownian motion and reversible gates.
-- Ling, Feb 22 2005


I'd think that would be more along the lines of bottleneck is the human interface.
-- Freefall, Feb 22 2005


You need some kind of amplification capability to enable logic circuits, AFAIK. Can water amplify a signal?
-- notexactly, Apr 25 2019



random, halfbakery