There’s a limitation, however, to DNA computing: each of the many trillions of computers has to perform the same operation at the same time (although on different data), so that the device is a “single instruction multiple data” (SIMD) architecture. While there are important classes of problems that are amenable to a SIMD system (for example, processing every pixel in an image for image enhancement or compression, and solving combinatorial-logic problems), it is not possible to program them for general-purpose algorithms, in which each computer is able to execute whatever operation is needed
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