Ultimate physical limits to computation

Details Ultimate physical limits to computation Ultimate physical limits to computation

1999-08-13

arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9908043v3

Physics

Quantum Physics

22 pages, plain TeX, submitted to Nature, replaced to incorporate additional content and references

Scientific paper

Computers are physical systems: what they can and cannot do is dictated by the laws of physics. In particular, the speed with which a physical device can process information is limited by its energy and the amount of information that it can process is limited by the number of degrees of freedom it possesses. This paper explores the physical limits of computation as determined by the speed of light $c$, the quantum scale $\hbar$ and the gravitational constant $G$. As an example, quantitative bounds are put to the computational power of an `ultimate laptop' with a mass of one kilogram confined to a volume of one liter.

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