News Lab Demos ‘Living’ PC Powered by Mushrooms

[Admin]

The Unconventional Computing Laboratory (UCL) from the University of the West of England (UWE) shares insight on mushroom computers.

Lab Demos ‘Living’ PC Powered by Mushrooms : Read more

 

[usertests]

The motherboard photo is just for publicity, I think. The Popular Science article has other photos that are more representative of how it works.

https://www.popsci.com/uploads/2023/02/27/IMG_20200708_155823436-scaled.jpg

 

[TheJoker2020]

Apparently April arrived early this year...

Also, I suggest people at least look at the pictures in the original article as a couple are of this actual "mushroom computer", and it's more like a 1950's computer on a tiny scale, essentially it exists to study, and that's it.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

I wonder if mushroom computer ai follows the same philosophy as that of mushroom management

 

[emike09]

Are we the Borg in this situation? Have we assimilated the hive mind of fungi to do our deeds? I find it inevitable that the fungi will assimilate us as we teach it how we communicate.

 

[bit_user]

I find the idea of a mushroom brain rather fascinating, even if it's relatively simple by comparison with what exists in the animal kingdom.

We shouldn't get ahead of the research, though. They've found some underlying mechanisms similar to the nervous system, but have they even found anything that could be characterized as "learning behavior"?

 

[J_E_D_70]

Do you want "clickers"? Cuz that's how you end up with clickers.

 

[bit_user]

Do you want "clickers"? Cuz that's how you end up with clickers.

If that's a Last of Us reference... you know that's fiction, right? I wouldn't even call it science fiction.

There are a lot of things to be afraid of, in the world, but that's not one of them. Even among fungus-based threats, mycotoxins are the main thing to worry about. Infectious fungal diseases are a real thing, but it's more like athlete's foot (there are worse examples, in that same vein).

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

While things like this are impractical on the large scale, look at how they can be applied to the very small scale. Look at all the use one disposable electronics which researches are trying to make green with biodegradable casings and paper based motherboards, replacing most of the electronics with mushrooms could help that problem.

 

[ezst036]

Mushroom computers can’t rival regular computers with best CPUs in terms of performance. However, there are some benefits to mushroom computers. For example. they flaunt enhanced fault tolerance because of their self-generation property and better reconfigurability because they grow and evolve. In addition, mushroom computers draw minimal power, so they have excellent energy efficiency.

Why compare low power mushroom computers to the best CPUs? This seems like a mismatch. We gonna compare Threadrippers to Raspberry Pis?

Wouldn't comparing mushroom to some ARM (perhaps Apple M1) along with some Ryzen GE CPUs and mobile Alder Lake and RISC-V make more sense?

 

[bit_user]

Why compare low power mushroom computers to the best CPUs? This seems like a mismatch.

It's a shameless plug they always seem to do, especially in their articles about general tech. I guess they're hoping these sorts of articles draw in new readers who might not be aware of the site's resources on PC advice.

Wouldn't comparing mushroom to some ARM (perhaps Apple M1) along with some Ryzen GE CPUs and mobile Alder Lake and RISC-V make more sense?

I wouldn't compare them with conventional machines, at all. IMO, there are three interesting aspects/avenues of this research:

1. To understand what communication, computation, and memory is occurring by these means, in the wild.
2. As a tool to use, in bio-engineering.
3. For composition of biodegradable computers usable in sensitive ecosystems or perhaps even medical implants.

Regarding the second point, there's a whole field of biology that's concerned with computational mechanisms. I think most of the work, to date, has focused on chemistry. The mycelium provides a very interesting avenue for exploring new computational mechanisms.

As for point #3, we might be talking kHz and not MHz. Think of very simple, low-tech purpose-built circuits. Not anything on the level of a general-purpose microcontroller.

Heh, ...mycocontroller.
; )

 

[edzieba]

The key part of this research is the use of fungi for binary logical computation. Fungi have been demonstrated for other forms of computation for some time, e.g. the classic slime-mould network optimisation example.

 

[Amdlova]

At people try to eat that mushroom...

View: https://youtu.be/n2WqYidC_0Y

 

[alchemy69]

That motherboard looks a lot like my keyboard tray but you really need to slap someone in your art department.

 

[nostrocrompt]

Didn't even post any gaming benchmarks smh

 

[NightLight]

Shrooms... is there anything they can't do?...

 

[dimar]

I'd only use motherboard powered by mushrooms if I want the best VR features.