Trans-Newtonian Computing

Trans-Newtonian Computing

The discovery of Trans-Newtonian elements (TNEs) by a UN research team in late 2024 had profound applications for industry, trade, and technology. In general, devices based on TNE materials or circuitry operated with greater effectiveness than their pre-TN analogues. Great advances in computing and communications have been made in the years since.

Hardware

TN Computing Principles

TN microcircuitry is constructed in an analagous fashion to conventional circuitry, with the introduction of small quantities of the TNEs boronide (for power generation and routing), uridium (for signaling and data transport), corbomite-doped mercassium (for t-bit manipulation and data storage).

Boronide

The large t-electron cloud of a boronide atom is extremely diffuse, with the t-electrons having a high affinity for the fluidic space of the TN dimensions. This allows conventional electrons to easily replace t-electrons around a boronide atom. When the this happens, the replaced t-electron is shunted entirely into the TN dimension, releasing a not-insignificant amount of energy in standard space. While the energy release is typically less than that required to displace the t-electron, the difference is small.

The remarkable aspect of this property is that a conventionally conductive metal (gold, copper, etc) can have its total impedence (resistance and reactance) substantially lowered by doping with boronide. This enables extremely efficient power transmission, with very little thermal or electrical loss. While this has great implications for terrestrial powerline transmission, it is even more significant for electronic devices, particularly those which would otherwise suffer extreme leakage currents due to their small sizes.

Uridium

While the t-electron cloud of a uridium atom is also rather large, it is rather tightly coupled to the nucleus, due to the larger number of t-protons. The particular shape of the uridium t-electron cloud turns each uridium atom into a tiny dipole antenna. Ansibles use a novel technique to torque uridium atoms, which causes them to release a superluminal pulse. More conventional techniques can be used to stimulate the uridium atoms without torquing them, causing them to act more like conventional (i.e., subluminal) transmitters and receivers. When operated in this mode, the pulse rate can be extraordinarily high, enabling uridium-based conventional antennas to transmit and receive at unheard of rates.

When coupled with efficient boronide power conduits, this enables extremely high-speed communications for a pittance of electricity, all contained in a package generally an order of magnitude smaller than conventional devices. This capacity for high-frequency signaling is utilized over tiny distances to replace metallic data communication leads in many computing and communication devices, further improving efficiencies and reducing package size.

Mercassium

Mercassium forms the third leg of the TN computing tripod. Mercassium itself has the peculiar property (like corbomite) of having an atomic state known as quasi-spin. This is due to the fact that the magnetic spin of its constituent TN particles is strongly coupled to the fluidic space of the TN dimension. This fixed orientation can be read non-destructively by bouncing a photon off the atom and intercepting the rebound. In the positive quasi-spin state, the reflected photon is frequency shifted upwards (causing a gain in energy, drawn from fluidic space), and in the negative state, the reflected photon is frequency shifted downwards (causing a loss of energy, depositing it into fluidic space).

When subjected to an ICEF field, mercassium becomes "unstuck" in fluidic space, and the quasi-spin value oscillates according to the frequency of the ICEF field. Together, these two effects can be used to use mercassium atoms as bits.

Mercassium corbomide (mercorb) is a TN compound consisting of a single atom of corbomite bonded to a single atom of mercassium through a fluidic bond. When formed into a uniform thin matrix (often sandwiched between layers of conventional silicon), each molecule in the matrix becomes a single-bit in a memory array. Addressing is performed by a uridium-based switching unit, which can isolate a single molecule in the matrix and stimulate it using tuned TN radiation. This causes the corbomite atom to exert an ICEF force upon the mercassium atom, freeing it from its fixed quasi-spin. By measuring the state of the bit, then applying an ICEF field of a known frequency, the bit can be reset to the opposite state.

This alone turns mercorb into an extremely dense and rugged memory medium. Because the memory cannot be accidentally set (as only certain frequencies will stimulate the corbomite atom), a set bit will maintain its value indefinitely. Because bits consist of a single molecule of mercorb, the storage density is very high (areal data densities of 443 yottabytes / m^2, or 100,000 times the theoretical density of quantum electronic holography). Because of the high-frequency uridium switching/addressing units, read and write speed is also very high.

Software

The sheer power of TN computing devices meant that many algorithms, previously discarded as being too slow or inefficient, were resurrected. These eventually gave way to new algorithms targeting the massive parallelization opportunities presented by the small scale of TN devices.

Artificial Intelligence

While great strides had been made in the field of artificial intelligence prior to the TN revolution, the attendant increase in computing power allowed more and more complex systems to be set up, increasing the fidelity and capabilities of AIs. While sentience is still a long way off, modern AIs regularly come very close to passing the Turing test. Commercial AIs are often deliberately hampered in order to increase their usability.

Computing Revolution

The combination of enormous capacity, speed, and efficiency has caused a (relatively) overnight transformation of the computing space. Following Moore's law, it would have taken nearly 16 years to establish this five-order-of-magnitude increase in computing power, even presuming many of the physical limitations facing computing in the pre-TN era were overcome.

As soon as the electronics giants could figure out a way to reliably fabricate these components, they did so, and began incorporating them into consumer electronics, military hardware, and every other possible application. The result was an explosion of personal computing power and massive networking. The PC-mobile device convergence was completed in the span of several months, as even the relatively primitive early TN computers could outperform a top of the line pre-TN device by several hundred times. Wearable computing devices became extremely fashionable in 2029, as continued advances in fabrication techniques made devices small enough to wear unobtrusively a reality. This gave rise to the concept of the Universal Computing Agent.

Universal Computing Agent

With the ubiquity of wearable TN computing devices, progress shifted to integrating all the devices a user might have into one device. Competition between manufacturers grew extremely intense, with fortunes made and lost with a novel design or a commercial flop. Finally, a standard was set in 2031, allowing different manufacturers to provide the same base functionality while offering different perks. This standard, known as the Universal Computing Agent, included massively-broadband internet connectivity (reducing retrieval times for almost any routine transaction to the order of nanoseconds), always-listening voice command, and direct retinal display. A cloud services architecture with essentially unlimited storage turns the device into a media player, reference book, personal assistant, and any number of other functions.

Universal Intelligent Agent

The next development came very shortly afterward, with the integration of artificial intelligence into the UCA baseline. This allowed for interacting with the device as if it were an individual, making data retrieval far more comfortable. UIAs are often customizable, with commercial software packages able to give them different personalities and capabilities.

This level of integration has made the UIA a practical necessity in today's world. Monetary transcations, personal telecommunications, recordkeeping, and more are all controlled by a person's UIA. They can be set to record everything a person sees and hears during a day, for later playback or archiving. First-world humanity has come to rely heavily on the UIAs for keeping track of an increasingly complicated life.