Advances in molecular electronics

Scientists at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and the Univ. of Konstanz are working on storing and processing information on the level of single molecules to create the smallest possible components that will combine autonomously to form a circuit. As recently reported in Advanced Science, the researchers can switch on the current flow through a single molecule for the first time with the help of light.

Dr. Artur Erbe, physicist at the HZDR, is convinced that in the future molecular electronics will open the door for novel and increasingly smaller—while also more energy efficient—components or sensors: "Single molecules are currently the smallest imaginable components capable of being integrated into a processor." Scientists have yet to succeed in tailoring a molecule so that it can conduct an electrical current and that this current can be selectively turned on and off like an electrical switch.

Graphics in reverse

Most recent advances in artificial intelligence—such as mobile apps that convert speech to text—are the result of machine learning, in which computers are turned loose on huge data sets to look for patterns.

To make machine-learning applications easier to build, computer scientists have begun developing so-called probabilistic programming languages, which let researchers mix and match machine-learning techniques that have worked well in other contexts. In 2013, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), an incubator of cutting-edge technology, launched a four-year program to fund probabilistic-programming research.

Team tightens bounds on quantum information “speed limit”

If you're designing a new computer, you want it to solve problems as fast as possible. Just how fast is possible is an open question when it comes to quantum computers, but physicists at NIST have narrowed the theoretical limits for where that "speed limit" is. The research implies that quantum processors will work more slowly than some research has suggested.

The work offers a better description of how quickly information can travel within a system built of quantum particles such as a group of individual atoms. Engineers will need to know this to build quantum computers, which will have vastly different designs and be able to solve certain problems much more easily than the computers of today. While the new finding does not give an exact speed for how fast information will be able to travel in these as-yet-unbuilt computers—a longstanding question—it does place a far tighter constraint on where this speed limit could be.