Ultimate Physical Limits to Computation

February 11, 2021 Jeremiah Hendren

Ultimate Physical Limits to Computation

Lloyd, Seth
Nature 406, no. 6799 (2000): 1047-1054
https://doi.org/10.1038/35023282

Over the past half century, the amount of information that computers are capable of processing and the rate at which they process it has doubled every two years, a phenomenon known as Moore’s law. A variety of technologies—most recently, integrated circuits—have enabled this exponential increase in information processing power. There is no particular reason why Moore’s law should continue to hold: it is a law of human ingenuity, not of nature. At some point, Moore’s law will break down. The question is, When? [...] The purpose of this article is to determine just what limits the laws of physics place on the power of computers. At first, this might seem a futile task: since we don’t know the technologies by which computers one thousand, one hundred, or even ten years in the future will be constructed, how can we determine the physical limits of those technologies? In fact, as will now be shown, a great deal can be determined concerning the ultimate physical limits of computation simply from knowledge of the speed of light...

Seth Lloyd

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