Hot on the news that neutrinos can travel faster than light, scientists at Intel have constructed their new neutrino chip set to make use of this unexpected subatomic behaviour.
"The N-Chip will revolutionise the computer industry as much as every other step forward we have taken," said Intel CEO, Alan Michael Davies. "With neutrinos instead of electrons we can calculate the answer before it is even asked."
Although mostly working, the new chip set will not be appearing in computers and mobile devices until a couple of small issues can be resolved.
"In general day-to-day usage tests," said Davies, "the chip set performs miraculously. However, once the temperature raised above hundred degrees kelvin [minus one hundred and seventy-three degrees centigrade], the neutrinos transmute from the useful tau neutrinos into the less useful muon. Obviously, those that transmute into electrons are simply used as standard electrons."
The second problem is leakage. Approximately ninety-nine percent of all the neutrinos leak out of the chips as they tunnel through alternate dimensions.
"The leakage problem means that one computer can be set a problem," said Davies, "and another computer can solve it. If we could control which computers would be used, this would allow us to use massive parallel processing across many computers, and provide a secure wireless network that would be unable to be intercepted. Unfortunately, we cannot control which computer will answer the question."
Intel are sure that these two small problems can be overcome. Meanwhile tests continue to be run, one of which is trying to ask the question "how can we make neutrino computers work?" which should get answered before it's asked.
"We're having trouble phrasing it in a way the computers understand," said Davies. "So far, it's given us several answers before the questions asked. But who needs cancer cures, world peace solutions and the secret to immortality? We threw all those useless answers away."
