It is only a matter of time before "Beam me up Scottie!" won't be a joke

Things that make me go ‘humph’ but this is really just too cool for words from Israel 21C:

A new version of a biomolecular computer developed at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology - composed entirely of DNA molecules and enzymes - outdoes even the fastest of its kind, performing as many as a billion different programs simultaneously.

Previous biomolecular computers, such as the one built by a joint team from the Technion and the Weizmann Institute of Science three years ago, were limited to just 765 simultaneous programs.

Current computers consist of metal, plastic, wires and transistors. The manner in which they process information is called linear because they conduct one computation at a time. In the latest generation of computers, biological molecules replace all the components. One advantage of these biomolecular computers over linear computers is their ability to simultaneously carry out an enormous number of complex operations.

This new biological computer is also autonomous; it processes calculations from beginning to end without any human assistance. Other biomolecular computers require humans to analyze and decipher results and perform intermediate tasks at different points in the process before the computer can complete the operation.

[..]

One of the most promising applications for such autonomous molecular computers would be the encryption of images. Images could be encrypted on a chip containing the equivalent of 41 million pixels so that deciphering them would be impossible to those without access to a secret key comprised of several short DNA molecules and several enzymes.

Everyday it seems that we are one step closer to the Star Trek Zone where the possibilities are endless and only limited by one’s imagination.

(tipped off by Israellycool)