The most amazing computers (2023): weird, fast, biological

What will be the computer of the future? In this list, we bring you the most amazing new computers, from the simplest and smallest, to the most advanced, impressive or futuristic devices.

Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 - dual display laptop

At last year's show, Lenovo introduced its new ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 laptop, which has not one, but two displays. The main display is a 17.3-inch screen with a resolution of 3072 by 1440 pixels, while the secondary display is an 8-inch screen with a resolution of 800 by 1280. The second screen helps free up space on the main display. The presence of two displays makes your work more convenient. For example, you can use one application on one screen and another on the other, and you won't need to shrink windows and ruin your eyesight. The internal parameters of the computer more than meet modern requirements for a PC. Equipped with a powerful 12th Gen Intel Core H-series processor and up to 2TB SSD. What's the price? The ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 is available for purchase starting at $1,156.

CyberPower Kinetic PC - "breathing" PC case

CyberPower has created a completely new computer case solution that revolutionizes the ventilation of the computer case and gives it a very futuristic design. It has 18 self-contained ports that can be opened and closed to increase or decrease airflow. Smart technology monitors the temperature and opens more or less holes, depending on the heat. You can install up to seven 120mm fans or up to five 140mm fans in the chassis. The case will ship to select computer manufacturers in the second half of this year, and may also be available in retail stores.

Frontier - the fastest computer in the world

Frontier, created in 2022 by Hewlett Packard Corporation, became the world's first exascale supercomputer, meaning it can perform 1.102 quintillion operations per second. Today it is the fastest computing device that will be used for calculations in various branches of science, as well as for predicting environmental challenges. Its production cost about $600 million, it consists of 74 cabinets with a total weight of 3.63 tons, and the total length of the cables used in it is 90 miles. Before the Frontier appeared, the fastest computer was the Fugaku of the Japanese concern Fujitsu.

The smallest computers

Three professors of The University of Michigan, David Blaau, Dennis Sylvester and Jamie Phillips, have created a device that claims to be the smallest computer in the world. The creators of the gadget expect that it can be used in medicine as a temperature sensor, for example, to measure the temperature of cancerous tumors. Its length is 0.3 mm, that is, it is less than a grain of rice. The device includes RAM, a processor, transmitters and receivers, but no storage for data, leading some to believe that it is not a computer in the full sense.

Meanwhile, IBM also has the ambition of building the world's smallest computer and is already working on developing a 1mm x 1mm device. According to the company, it will be a full-fledged computer that will be able to "control, analyze, communicate and even act on data." It is expected to be used to collect data for AI technology in numerous areas, from smart home devices to blockchain technologies.

Raspberry Pi Zero W - the cheapest computer

The independent Raspberry Foundation creates compact and super-cheap devices that are designed to make building computers accessible to everyone and a fun creative process. The centerpiece of its product range is the Raspberry Pi Zero W single-board computer, which is the size of a business card. It is equipped with a 1 GHz processor (BCM2835) and 512 MB of RAM, and other Raspberry devices can also be connected to it, such as Pibow Zero case, display, camera, Bluetooth speakers, USB and HDMI adapter cables, etc. It supports Bluetooth, and a special set of adapters allows you to connect it to your other devices. And the price of the Raspberry Pi Zero W is only $15!

In a word, Raspberry products are a kind of "constructor" that can be used both for training and for experiments in the field of IoT. For example, the enthusiast Conrad Barski developed the Lisperati1000 project based on it - this is a computer, the case of which everyone can make himself on a 3D printer and assemble the "stuffing" from individual cheap components in accordance with the "Do It Yourself" instructions, which are freely available on the project website.

PotatoP - perhaps the longest working computer

The computer and other entertainment devices inspired Norwegian developer Andreas Eriksen to create the PotatoP, a computer whose battery lasts for many years thanks to the use of extremely low-power parts. He cannot be denied irony, because he chose the word "potato" not by chance, but because it is often used to describe a low-power / poorly functioning device. This portable computer, controlled by a Lisp port on a microcontroller, runs on a SparkFun Artemis module, which has a single low-power Arm Cortex-M4F core at up to 96 MHz, and Bluetooth 5.0 low energy (BLE). For the display, he chose SHARP technology, which is closer to the ePaper and consumes a minimum of energy.

Mushroom computer

And finally, we come to the craziest device on our list. Did you know that mushrooms can retain memory and also "communicate" with other components of flora and fauna? Yes, yes, scientists have been researching the root structure of fungi for a long time, which can send and receive electrical signals and store information. In other words, they can be biological components of a computer. Andrew Adamatzky, director of the Unconventional Computing Lab at the University of the West of England (Bristol, UK), is leading research in this area by placing electrodes in fungal structures (mycelium) and thus recording their electrical activity. Having deciphered the language that fungi use to send signals to other living organisms through a biological network (called the "wooden web" or "Nature's Internet"), scientists seek to understand how the ecosystems in which fungi are involved will unravel, and in the future, perhaps use them to build computer systems that are self-healing, more maintainable, and energy efficient than traditional computers.

Brain cell chip

To find a better principle for a computer, the most advanced developments today are directed to the creation of chips based on living brain cells, that became possible by recent advances in stem cell research. Artificially grown brain cells can be created from skin or blood stem cells. Many start-ups and giant companies are developing in this area. One of them, the Australian company Cortical Labs built artificially grown brain cells into a computer silicon chip in 2021. Experiments of this kind open up enormous possibilities for creating computers of the future, because the human brain is capable of performing an astronomical number of operations per second, while consuming a very low amount of energy. However, the use of donor cells and creation raises controversy and serious moral questions, to which there is no clear answer yet.