4 ms·
And you have to be able to compose gates. Not to detract from a very cool demonstration, but it appears that all of the energy comes from the "inputs" which ha
by vampirebat 12y ago
And you have to be able to compose gates.
Not to detract from a very cool demonstration, but it appears that all of the energy comes from the "inputs" which have to overcome all of the frictional forces in the system. With semiconductor gates, each gate provide the energy required to drive the gates it is connected to which facilitates composition.
- GauntletWizard 12y agoYes, this system is also prone to 'fuzzy' states due do slight variances that would multiply quite a bit if used for a full computation. It'd be cool to see a rectifier for this system, which will guarantee a full 1 or 0 state given a marginal state, though I'm not entirely certain how you'd build one.
- bigiain 12y agoMechanical engineers have been solving that problem in various ways for hundreds of years. The gate in a film projector(or camera), the steam valve block on many steam engines, even the gear selector drum assembly on a motorcycle gearbox - and the mechanical gubbins inside every lightswitch displays the sort of hysteresis you need. I bet a typical 1950's engineer would solve that problem for you in a dozen ways in 20 minutes. (these days I suspect many engineers today would reach for a microcontroller and a servomotor or solenoid...)