Nature paper demos thermodynamically favoured DNA computer running 10 programs, incl. 25-bit addition
MaxUnfried · x · 2026-09-17
An open-access Nature paper introduces the Scaffolded DNA Computer (SDC), a thermodynamically favoured molecular computer. Instead of relying on energetically costly kinetic proofreading in non-equilibrium architectures, computation is embedded in a system relaxing to a thermodynamic equilibrium state, pointing toward far lower energy cost. The authors demonstrate 10 programs, including Multiplication-by-3, Division-by-2, 8-bit parity detection, and addition of 25-bit numbers — a 100-bit computation — showing programmable computation via energy landscape engineering.
Related event: Nature Publishes Scaffolded DNA Computer Capable of 100-bit Addition(2 posts)→
More from Research
- Radial gate objective cuts diffusion transformer FID from 16.24 to 11.83 — Junha Park · 2026-11-02
- REA: async brain-cerebellum runtime for robots where policies never wait on the LLM — Pengfei Zhou · 2026-11-02
- Microsoft's MemSteer turns unlabeled user histories into agent memory supervision — MicrosoftResearch · 2026-11-02
- SciGame benchmark uses counterfactual worlds to expose LLM agents' priors vs evidence — Yusheng Zhao · 2026-11-02
- On Terence Tao's blog, Frank Calegari calls on mathematicians to adapt after OpenAI's 700-paper release — Hesamation · 2026-11-02
- Tsinghua & Microsoft's HarnessMM cuts agent token use by up to 87.93% while raising success rate — rohanpaul_ai · 2026-11-02