Computing with Chemistry: Chemical Reaction Networks and Reservoir Computing

Contemporary computation is expensive, with large language models (LLMs) and artificial intelligence becoming more common in our daily lives. This thirst for computation has so far been quenched but high-performance computing (HPC) is reaching the limits in speed and energy expenditure with domain science requiring ever increasing computational capacity. As we progress towards post-exascale computation with the associated high energy costs, new disruptive methods of energy conscious computation are required. Chemical reactions offer a promising solution. Computers based on chemistry can provide compact desktop devices with immense computational power. These devices are readily scalable, by considering greater reaction systems or vessels, meeting the high-performance requirements for scientific workflows. These systems are dependent on the physical thermodynamic principles governing chemical kinetics which requires effective modelling and understanding to compose computable systems from the ensemble of potential reactions in a given chemical system. In this poster, we demonstrate a potential workflow which can harness chemistry’s computing power to create energy efficient high-performance computation systems for contemporary computing needs.