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Nature 406, 1047-1054 (31 August 2000) | doi:10.1038/35023282
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Senior Scientific Manager / Chief Scientific Manager for Neuroscience Group In Vivo Pharmacology / Biology
- Syngene International
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review article Ultimate physical limits to computation
Seth Lloyd1
Abstract
Computers are physical systems: the laws of physics dictate what
they can and cannot do. 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.
Here I explore the physical limits of computation as determined by the speed
of light c, the quantum scale 
and the gravitational constant
G. As an example, I put quantitative bounds to the computational power
of an 'ultimate laptop' with a mass of one kilogram confined
to a volume of one litre.
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 18 months, a phenomenon known as Moore's law. A variety of technologies — most recently, integrated circuits — have enabled this exponential increase in information processing power.
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