Mushroom Machines

How a professor is creating a building full of fungal sensors

- Ian Evenden

Previously on these pages we’ve looked at advances in quantum computing and the use of carbon nanotubes to build processors. This month we’re stepping further off the path of the conventional than ever before. Yes, we’re going to Bristol.

The University of the West of England will teach you a degree course in anything from accountancy to ecology, but is also home to the Centre for Unconventional Computing and its professor. The single photograph that features on the centre’s website features a toilet roll, a headless skeleton, a fume cupboard, a mechanic’s toolset, oscilloscopes and, disappointingly, only two actual computers. There’s a white lab coat thrown over a chair, it’s that sort of place.

The centre was set up by Professor Andrew Adamatzky in 2001 “as a response to an urgent need to develop computers for [the] next century”, and designs new computing techniques and architectures using physical, chemical, and biological media. They’re also interested in the kinds of massively parallel architectures we’re starting to see in supercomputer GPUs and the chips that are needed to run a self-driving car.