Physics and Computation

Abstract

Physics imposes fundamental constraints on the ultimate potentialities of computing mechanisms. The most prominent fundamental constraint coming from physics that is felt today is the finiteness of the speed of light. This constraint implies that communication paths inside of a computer should be as short as possible. For maximum speed, we would also like to have massive parallelism. This motivates us to consider the computational capabilities of cellular automata: uniform arrays of identical processors, each communicating only with nearby neighboring processors. Keywords: Computer architecture; Physics; Computation; Information; Modeling; Cellular automata; Reversibility; Quantum mechanics; Time.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 1988
Accession Number
ADA219843

Entities

People

  • Norman H. Margolus

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Ground and Sea Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Automata
  • Clocks
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Computational Science
  • Computers
  • Data Analysis
  • Difference Equations
  • Differential Equations
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • Fluid Flow
  • Logic
  • Logic Gates
  • Quantum Computing
  • Three Dimensional
  • Two Dimensional
  • Wave Equations

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Parallel and Distributed Computing.
  • Systems Analysis and Design
  • Wave Propagation and Nonlinear Chaotic Dynamics.

Technology Areas

  • Quantum Computing
  • Quantum Science - Quantum Dots