Feynman Lectures on Computation

✍ Scribed by Richard P. Feynman

• Publisher: Addison-Wesley
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 319
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

From 1983 to 1986, the legendary physicist and teacher Richard Feynman gave a course at Caltech called “Potentialities and Limitations of Computing Machines.”Although the lectures are over ten years old, most of the material is timeless and presents a “Feynmanesque” overview of many standard and some not-so-standard topics in computer science. These include computability, Turing machines (or as Feynman said, “Mr. Turing’s machines”), information theory, Shannon’s Theorem, reversible computation, the thermodynamics of computation, the quantum limits to computation, and the physics of VLSI devices. Taken together, these lectures represent a unique exploration of the fundamental limitations of digital computers.Feynman’s philosophy of learning and discovery comes through strongly in these lectures. He constantly points out the benefits of playing around with concepts and working out solutions to problems on your own-before looking at the back of the book for the answers. As Feynman says in the lectures: “If you keep proving stuff that others have done, getting confidence, increasing complexities of your solutions-for the fun of it-then one day you’ll turn around and discovers that nobody actually did that one! And that’s the way to become a computer scientist.”

✦ Table of Contents

Title page......Page 5
Contents......Page 7
Foreword......Page 10
Preface (Richard Feynman)......Page 15
1. Introduction to Computers......Page 17
1.1 The File Clerk Model......Page 21
1.2 Instruction Sets......Page 24
1.3 Summary......Page 33
2.1 Gates and Combinational Logic......Page 36
2.2 The Binary Decoder......Page 46
2.3 More on Gates: Reversible Gates......Page 50
2.4 Complete Sets of Operators......Page 55
2.5 Flip-Flops and Computer Memory......Page 58
2.6 Timing and Shift Registers......Page 62
3.1 Effective Procedures and Computability......Page 68
3.2 Finite State Machines......Page 71
3.3 The Limitations of Finite State Machines......Page 76
3.4 Turing Machines......Page 82
3.5 More on Turing Machines......Page 91
3.6 Universal Turing Machines and the Halting Problem......Page 96
3.7 Computability......Page 104
4. Coding and Information Theory......Page 110
4.2 Error Detecting and Correcting Codes......Page 111
4.3 Shannon's Theorem......Page 122
4.4 The Geometry of Message Space......Page 126
4.5 Data Compression and Information......Page 131
4.6 Information Theory......Page 136
4.7 Further Coding Techniques......Page 139
4.8 Analogue Signal Transmission......Page 145
5.1 The Physics of Information......Page 153
5.2 Reversible Computation and the Thermodynamics of Computing......Page 167
5.3 Computation: Energy Cost versus Speed......Page 183
5.4 The General Reversible Computer......Page 188
5.5 The Billiard Ball Computer......Page 192
5.6 Quantum Computation......Page 198
6.1 Introduction......Page 201
6.2 Computation with a Reversible Machine......Page 203
6.3 A Quantum Mechanical Computer......Page 207
6.4 Imperfections and Irreversible Free Energy Loss......Page 215
6.5 Simplifying the Implementation......Page 218
6.6 Conclusions......Page 226
6.7 References......Page 227
A Caveat from the Editors......Page 228
7.1 The Physics of Semiconductor Devices......Page 229
7.2 Energy Use and Heat Loss in Computers......Page 254
7.3 VLSI Circuit Construction......Page 273
7.4 Further Limitations on Machine Design......Page 290
Afterword: Memories of Richard Feynman......Page 300
Suggested Reading......Page 310
Index......Page 313