He believes chemists can design and construct molecules to do the work of silicon chips but in a much smaller space and far faster. There are several different logic gates used in computing. For instance, an 'AND' gate gives an 'on' or '1' output when both its inputs are '1'. An 'OR' gate, is only 'on' or '1' when its inputs are '1' or '0'. The NOT, OR, INH, and NOR gates and many others all work together to do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
Computation always reduces to maths.
The gates are based on tiny claw- shaped molecules that trap different ions. They then use these ions to represent binary 1's. With no ions present the molecule stays switched off, there is no glow, so the output is 0. The XOR molecule works similarly but lights up only when the two inputs are different. The clever bit, explains de Silva, comes when you makes these two logic gates work together.