> We demonstrate fungal computing via mycelial networks interfaced with electrodes, showing that fungal memristors can be grown, trained, and preserved through dehydration, retaining functionality at frequencies up to 5.85 kHz, with an accuracy of 90 ± 1%. Notably, shiitake has exhibited radiation resistance, suggesting its viability for aerospace applications
Soon we'll have shiitake replacing transistors in our airplane and spacecraft computers, while sitting and eating ramen on the vehicles themselves. The future is shaping up to be interesting.
Having only dabbled the slightest in hardware... are functional frequencies topping out at 6 kHz useful for memristors in modern computing? I feel like having separate components each magnitudes faster would be better than combining them into a memristor that sounds so slow.
If you mean x86 class performance, no, obviously not.
But 6kHz is not nothing. For application-specific computers, you can do a lot with very little. You aren't going to be building high performance general purpose computers, but for an atonomous circuit quietly ticking away computing orbital trajectories or stellar navigation, you don't need modern x86 class performance.
If it enables massively concurrent in-memory compute then the frequency disadvantage could just be scaled away.
IF you don't care about the issue of moving information, and provided your problem is embarassingly parallel.
Fortunately, a lot of problems are embarassingly parallel.
A bunch of mushrooms as a giant 6kHz memory array with in-memory computing seems pretty pointless IRL. But it adds a nice air of plausibility to some sci-fi stories!
Might be enough for microcontrollers and overall simple control applications?
So sci-fi isn’t far off after all.
War of the Worlds.
The last of us.
Battlestar Galatica.
All had some fungi/organic hook (ok, last of us is about zombies but still).
Curious if we could mux them into something faster at a higher order or something. The idea that organics can be used for electronics is so wild.
Star Trek has a number of organic computing examples, too. Species 8472, Data, and the Borg all use varying degrees of organic components.
There's also the bio-neural gel packs on Voyager and the unnamed 31st century Earth vessel discovered by Archer and the NX-01 Enterprise.
New Trek even has a mycelial network in space.
New Trek is so awful. There’s no depth to anything. Interweaving stories to make them seem important. It’s just bad TV.
The previous, it gets better the closer to TNG it is. Granted DS9 was a different beast than TNG or Voyager. Those shows had episodes, individual stories, as well as seasonal arcs. Back when shows were written for TV. New Trek feels like a bad movie script broken into episodes with side character filler.
Planet/mindworms in Alpha Centauri :D
Juffo-Wup fills in my fibers and I grow turgid. Violent action ensues.
They are Non, they cannot understand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Control_II
Downloadable as 'uqm' in debian
….I..literally quoted another one of the Mycon's lines
What it makes me think of is 'cybernetics' research from the 1960s when it was not a foregone conclusion that transistors, especially CMOS transistors, were the future of computing. Back then there was a lot of research into alternate models of computation, something that's only becoming relevant today as CMOS may be running out of steam.
I recently read The Unaccountability Machine (which I can recommend btw), which mentions Stafford Beer's experiments with a computing pond. Who knows, maybe we'll control our factories with mushroom brains soon!
How is this related to that at all? The fungi they used are clearly dead...
> Soon we'll have shiitake replacing transistors in our airplane and spacecraft computers, while sitting and eating ramen on the vehicles themselves. The future is shaping up to be interesting.
By the way, some people say eating meat is not going to be sustainable as more and more people become able to afford it, and fungi are a great option for providing the equivalent protein intake.
It's already not sustainable, but that hasn't really stopped us.
It absolutely is possible though.
We don’t incentivize properly
As the young people say, Paul Stamets wants to "know your location".
Maybe we will figure out mushroom powered warp drive too some day.
Interesting new episodes of Air Crash Investigation coming up. Crucial avionics were inadvertently eaten by the inexperienced and hungry copilot.
The memristor industry will mushroom
Preserved through dehydration? This means the fungus is dead.