Hi there, this post just contains some preliminary research I'm doing for an upcoming post. This upcoming post will contain information about computing, its limits, and the advances required to get there. However, in general I'm hoping to argues against the claim that engineers should focus on pushing silicon-chip computing to its limits rather than focusing on alternatives to silicon-chips.
"Future Computing." Nature. Nature Publishing Group, 14 Aug. 2014. Web. 2 Feb. 2015. <http://www.nature.com/news/future-computing-1.15704>.
The author argues that we need to focus not on alternative methods of computing, but rather on reaching the end of usefulness of our current silicon-chip based computing. The author argues this through references to other, longer, more scholarly texts. One of these texts discusses how pushing the limits of technology in the past have led to leaps in advancement in areas related to that technology. The other text discusses the theoretical limits of computing.
Miodownik, Mark. "Perfectly Imperfect Silicon Chips: The Electronic Brains That Run the World." The Guardian. The Guardian, 22 Sept. 2014. Web. 2 Feb. 2015. <http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/22/silicon-chips-electronic-brains-of-world>.
The author argues that silicon chips are very important for how our world functions. The author supports this claim by first mentioning the precursor to silicon chips, the "hot, unreliable and bulky" vacume tubes. The author then goes on to talk about the amazingness that is the production and function of silicon chips, instilling a sense of awe in the audience.
Condliffe, Jamie. "What's Wrong With Quantum Computing." Gizmodo. Gizmodo, 15 Oct. 2013. Web. 2 Feb. 2015. <http://gizmodo.com/whats-wrong-with-quantum-computing-1444793497>.
The author argues that quantum computers aren't widely available because their base requirement are difficult to achieve. These base requirements include things like the fact that qubits (the data units of quantum computing) are difficult to produce and that quantum devices are difficult to scale, since they have to be isolated from the outside world. The author indicates a solution to the required isolation in the form of allowing for a margin of error. The author also presents that the computing done by quantum computers is very difficult to verify due to their probabilistic nature.
Llyod, Seth. "Ultimate Physical Limits to Computation." University of California, San Diego. University of California, San Diego, 14 Feb. 2000. Web. 2 Feb. 2015. <http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~gill/SynIntSite/Resources/LloydMIT.pdf>.
The author argues for the physical limits of computing, determined from the speed of light, the quantum scale, and the gravitational constant. A word of warning on this, the limits discussed in this article are purely theoretical and would prove extremely difficult, if not impossible, to reach. The author, using a lot of terms that are quite a bit beyond my knowledge of physics to understand, calculates the maximum speed per logical operation.
Bennett, Charles, and Rolf Landauer. "The Fundamental Physical Limits of Computation." Scientific American Global RSS. Scientific American, 1 June 2011. Web. 2 Feb. 2015. <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-fundamental-physical-limits-of-computation/>.
The author argues that there are fundamental limits oh computing, based purely on the laws of physics. The author talks about how losing data costs energy and as such, most conventional logic gates cost energy (an AND gate has two inputs and one output, we lost a bit). The author follows this up by talking about a Fredkin gate that has three inputs, three outputs, and when ligned up correctly can reproduce any conventional logic gate. The author continues to present several more examples, however all these examples seem to have a single major common point, all the actions are reversable, no information is lost in the computation. The author doesn't actually seem to discuss much about their stated purpose for this article.
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