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What's a Computer's Limit?
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Posted by: TotalRecall
Ars Technica has a great article up on the speed limits of computers. A great topic, seeing how Moore's Law has come up recently when Intel has announced that this law will only last until 2007. This is a very complicated article, and I suggest you don't try and look at the numbers unless you are a college physics professor. Here's a snip:
Digital computers, at their heart, perform very simple logical operations, for instance 'AND' and 'XOR', which they string together to represent more complicated functions. Now, the smaller the physical bits and pieces that perform those logical operations, the more of them you can pack in a given space, and the faster your computer will be (generally speaking). And something physical has to change in the computer when a logical operation is performed - for instance, something has to change from a '0' state to a '1' state, say. Well, it turns out that quantum mechanics places a limit on how fast anything can make a change from one quantum state to another, and that limit is related to how much energy something has.
Catch their full article here.
Posted by: Chako
Lol. For some unknown reason, when I started to read this article, I just knew black holes would come into play...
My favorite phrase is "For an ultimate computer massing 1 kg and occupying a volume of 1 L". Got to love physics..
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