BEIJING, March 11 (Xinhuanet) -- The most powerful -- and least understood -- computer known to science is the brain, and recently scientists designed a machine just a few molecules large that mimics how the brain works.

    Currently, the device can simultaneously carry out 16 times more operations than a normal computer transistor. Researchers suggest the invention might eventually prove able to perform roughly 1,000 times more operations than a transistor.

    This machine could not only serve as the foundation of a powerful computer, but also serve as the controlling element of complex gadgets such as microscopic doctors or factories, scientists added.

    The device is made of a compound known as duroquinone. This molecule resembles a hexagonal plate with four cones linked to it, "like a small car," explained researcher Anirban Bandyopadhyay, an artificial intelligence and molecular electronics scientist at the National Institute for Materials Science at Tsukuba in Japan.

    Duroquinone is less than a nanometer, or a billionth of a meter large. This makes it hundreds of times smaller than a wavelength of visible light. The machine is made of 17 duroquinone molecules. One molecule sits at the center of a ring formed by the remaining 16. The entire invention sits on a surface of gold.

    Scientists operate the device by tweaking the center duroquinone with electrical pulses from an extremely sharp electrically conductive needle. The molecule and its four cones can shift around in a variety of ways depending on different properties of the pulse — say, the pulse's strength.

    Since weak chemical bonds link the center duroquinone with the surrounding 16 duroquinones, each of those shifts too. 

    In this way, a pulse to the central duroquinone can simultaneously transmit different instructions to each of the surrounding 16 duroquinones. The researchers say this design was inspired by that of brain cells, which can radiate branches out like a tree, with each branch used to communicate with another brain cell.

    "All those connections are why the brain is so powerful," Bandyopadhyay said.

    Since duroquinone possesses four cones, each molecule essentially has four different settings. Since the central molecule can simultaneously control 16 other duroquinones, mathematically this means a single pulse at the machine can have 4"16 — or nearly 4.3 billion — different outcomes.

    In comparison, a normal computer transistor can only carry out just one instruction at once, and only has two settings — 0 and 1. This means a single pulse at it can only have two different outcomes.

    (Agencies)