Science & Technology

Inventing a computer that never crashes

By T.K. Randall
February 19, 2013 ·  54 comments

Image Credit: LeRoy N. Sanchez Known as a "systemic" computer, the resilient machine is capable of keeping mission-critical systems running by self-repairing whenever there is damage to its systems or its files become corrupted. Unlike a standard computer which sequentially executes one instruction at a time, the systemic computer is divided up in to systems that contain context-sensitive data and that can run simultaneously without reliance on any other running system.

"The pool of systems interact in parallel, and randomly, and the result of a computation simply emerges from those interactions," said UCL computer scientist Peter Bentley. In the future such computers could prove invaluable in robotic systems such as drones or spacecraft that need to reprogram themselves to compensate for damage or other problems experienced on the fly.[!gad]Known as a "systemic" computer, the resilient machine is capable of keeping mission-critical systems running by self-repairing whenever there is damage to its systems or its files become corrupted. Unlike a standard computer which sequentially executes one instruction at a time, the systemic computer is divided up in to systems that contain context-sensitive data and that can run simultaneously without reliance on any other running system.

"The pool of systems interact in parallel, and randomly, and the result of a computation simply emerges from those interactions," said UCL computer scientist Peter Bentley. In the future such computers could prove invaluable in robotic systems such as drones or spacecraft that need to reprogram themselves to compensate for damage or other problems experienced on the fly.

Source: New Scientist | Comments (54)

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