Limits on Fundamental Limits to Computation

An indispensable part of our lives, computing has also become essential to industries and governments. Steady improvements in computer hardware have been supported by periodic doubling of transistor densities in integrated circuits over the last fifty years. Such Moore scaling now requires increasingly heroic efforts, stimulating research in alternative hardware and stirring controversy. To help evaluate emerging technologies and enrich our understanding of integrated-circuit scaling, we review fundamental limits to computation: in manufacturing, energy, physical space, design and verification effort, and algorithms. To outline what is achievable in principle and in practice, we recall how some limits were circumvented, compare loose and tight limits. We also point out that engineering difficulties encountered by emerging technologies may indicate yet-unknown limits.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl

Trailblazers in Electromechanical Computing

Over the last six decades, electronic computing has spread so deeply in science and technology to became a fundamental tool for studying, researching and designing. Passing through vacuum tubes, transistors, integrated circuits and microprocessors, electronics has allows an amazing growth in computing power [1] and the recent commissioning in 2016 of the all-Chinese Sunway TaihuLight with a computing power 93 PFLOPS (1015 floating point operations per second), two and a half times larger than the previous world top supercomputer, the Chinese Tianhe-2 of 2013 powered with Intel processors, suggests that the evolution is still far from saturation. It is quite intriguing to wonder what was automatic computing before electronics started such a boost in computing power. Indeed, the search for mechanical tools aimed at relieving from the burden of computing goes far back into the past, at least to the ancient times when the abacus was built. However, it was with electricity that this possibility made a major step ahead

Engineering Change in Mexico: The Adoption of Computer Technology at Grupo ICA (1965-1971)

This article documents the adoption of computer technology by a civil engineering services and construction company in Mexico at the time that it became the first Mexican multinational enterprise. Computerization took place independently of cross border growth. The challenges, failures and successes of computerization attest to the transformation in the use of computer applications from the mechanization of routine procedures to the creative use of these applications. In line with company policy, the latter lead to the establishment of the computer centre as a standalone, profit generating business unit. However, this policy responded to ‘laissez faire’ and fiscal (i.e. minimizing tax payments) rather than strategic considerations. To little surprise computer services never grew to be a significant income stream.Computer centers, History, Data processing, Computer integrated engineering, Mexico

Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Software Engineering Workshop

The four major topics of discussion included: the NASA Software Engineering Laboratory, software testing, human factors in software engineering and software quality assessment. As in the past years, there were 12 position papers presented (3 for each topic) followed by questions and very heavy participation by the general audience

Spartan Daily, May 3, 1990

Volume 94, Issue 61https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/7991/thumbnail.jp

Spartan Daily, October 8, 1990

Volume 95, Issue 26https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/8026/thumbnail.jp

Four Decades of Computing in Subnuclear Physics - from Bubble Chamber to LHC

This manuscript addresses selected aspects of computing for the reconstruction and simulation of particle interactions in subnuclear physics. Based on personal experience with experiments at DESY and at CERN, I cover the evolution of computing hardware and software from the era of track chambers where interactions were recorded on photographic film up to the LHC experiments with their multi-million electronic channels

Spartan Daily, December 10, 1991

Volume 97, Issue 68https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/8205/thumbnail.jp