The computer that never crashes

[Spectrum25 Profile]

The computer that never crashes

A revolutionary new computer based on the apparent chaos of nature can reprogram itself if it finds a fault

OUT of chaos, comes order. A computer that mimics the apparent randomness found in nature can instantly recover from crashes by repairing corrupted data.

Dubbed a "systemic" computer, the self-repairing machine now operating at University College London (UCL) could keep mission-critical systems working. For instance, it could allow drones to reprogram themselves to cope with combat damage, or help create more realistic models of the human brain.

Everyday computers are ill suited to modelling natural processes such as how neurons work or how bees swarm. This is because they plod along sequentially, executing one instruction at a time. "Nature isn't like that," says UCL computer scientist Peter Bentley. "Its processes are distributed, decentralised and probabilistic. And they are fault tolerant, able to heal themselves. A computer should be able to do that."

Today's computers work steadily through a list of instructions: one is fetched from the memory and executed, then the result of the computation is stashed in memory. That is then repeated – all under the control of a sequential timer called a program counter. While the method is great for number-crunching, it doesn't lend itself to simultaneous operations. "Even when it feels like your computer is running all your software at the same time, it is just pretending to do that, flicking its attention very quickly between each program," Bentley says.

He and UCL's Christos Sakellariou have created a computer in which data is married up with instructions on what to do with it. For example, it links the temperature outside with what to do if it's too hot. It then divides the results up into pools of digital entities called "systems".



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[The57ironman Profile]

the self-repairing machine now operating at University College London (UCL) could keep mission-critical systems working. For instance, it could allow drones to reprogram themselves to cope with combat damage

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