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Physical and Formal Aspects of Computation: Exploiting Physics for Computation and Exploiting Computation for Physical Purposes

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Book cover Advances in Unconventional Computing

Part of the book series: Emergence, Complexity and Computation ((ECC,volume 22))

Abstract

Achieving greater speeds and densities in the post-Moore’s Law era will require computation to be more like the physical processes by which it is realized. Therefore we explore the essence of computation, that is, what distinguishes computational processes from other physical processes. We consider such issues as the topology of information processing, programmability, and universality. We summarize general characteristics of analog computation, quantum computation, and field computation, in which data is spatially continuous. Computation is conventionally used for information processing, but since the computation governs physical processes, it can also be used as a way of moving matter and energy on a microscopic scale. This provides an approach to programmable matter and programmed assembly of physical structures. We discuss artificial morphogenesis, which uses the formal structure of embryological development to coordinate the behavior of a large number of agents to assemble complex hierarchical structures. We explain that this close correspondence between computational and physical processes is characteristic of embodied computation, in which computation directly exploits physical processes for computation, or for which the physical consequences of computation are the purpose of the computation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The \(\infty \)-product metric on the Cartesian product of two spaces \((X,\delta _1)\), \((Y, \delta _2)\) is defined \(\delta _\infty [(x,y), (x',y')] = \max [\delta _1(x,x'), \delta _2(y,y')]\).

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  1. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Bruce J. MacLennan

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  1. Unconventional Computing Centre, University of the West of England Unconventional Computing Centre, Bristol, United Kingdom

    Andrew Adamatzky

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MacLennan, B.J. (2017). Physical and Formal Aspects of Computation: Exploiting Physics for Computation and Exploiting Computation for Physical Purposes. In: Adamatzky, A. (eds) Advances in Unconventional Computing. Emergence, Complexity and Computation, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33924-5_5

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