<story><title>Computer powered by colony of blue-green algae has run for six months</title><url>https://www.newscientist.com/article/2319584-computer-powered-by-colony-of-blue-green-algae-has-run-for-six-months/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>LoveMortuus</author><text>&amp;gt; The computer ran in cycles of 45 minutes of calculating sums of consecutive integers to simulate a computational workload, which required 0.3 microwatts of power, and 15 minutes of standby, which required 0.24 microwatts. The computer itself measured the current output from the device and this data was stored in the cloud for researchers to analyse.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Christopher Howe at the University of Cambridge and his colleagues built a small enclosure about the size of an AA battery out of aluminium and clear plastic.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s REALLY not a lot of power, which of course is reasonable, but I do wonder how far can it scale, can it reach any generally usable.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s take a very conservative estimate of watt-hours of an AA battery of 2 Wh.
The computer used in the paper could run for 2,000,000 µWh &amp;#x2F; 0.3 µW = ~6,666,666h.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s convert to a more human friendly numbers:
6,666,666h &amp;#x2F; 24h = ~277,777 days.
277,777 days &amp;#x2F; 365 days = ~761 years.&lt;p&gt;I probably calculated all of this incorrectly, but I still have a feeling that blue-green algae might not be very scalable... :&amp;#x2F;</text></comment>
<story><title>Computer powered by colony of blue-green algae has run for six months</title><url>https://www.newscientist.com/article/2319584-computer-powered-by-colony-of-blue-green-algae-has-run-for-six-months/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>phtrivier</author><text>Stupid question : do the bacteria manage the create their organic mass entirely from air + sunlight, or does the &amp;quot;container&amp;quot; need a special substrate &amp;#x2F; soil &amp;#x2F; etc... ? How fast would that &amp;quot;deplete&amp;quot; relative to the metals in the anode &amp;#x2F; cathode ?&lt;p&gt;Also, how much does it &amp;quot;capture&amp;quot; carbon as part of the photosynthesis ?</text></comment>