Moore's Law Ensures Advanced Computing Capabilities SupportiveArgument1 #268263
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+Citations (1)
- CitationsAdd new citationList by: CiterankMapLink[1] The Future of Scientific Simulations: from Artificial Life to Artificial Cosmogenesis
Author: Clement Vidal Cited by: James Berrier 8:41 PM 25 April 2013 GMT URL: |
Excerpt / Summary This paper argues that a simulation of an entire universe will result from future scientific activity. They cite Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors doubles every 18 months on a single microprocessor resulting in exponential increases in processing speed and memory capacity. Extrapolating this growth into the future, they suggest the idea of free “computational energy” to increase the complexity of our simulations. Using ideas from Chaisson, “who proposed a quantitative metric to characterize the dynamic (not structural) complexity of physical, biological and cultural complex systems. It is the free energy rate which is the rate at which free energy transits in a complex system of a given mass. Its dimension is energy per time per mass. A star has a value ~1, planets ~102, plants ~103, humans ~104 and their brain ~105, current microprocessors ~1010. According to this metric, complexity has risen at a rate faster than exponential in recent times. We might add along this complexity increase, the hypothesis that there is a tendency to do ever more, requiring ever less energy, time and space; a phenomenon also called ephemeralization.” This means that complex systems are increasingly localized in space, accelerated in time, and dense in energy and matter flows. This source offers a good presentation of a common argument in this area: Moore’s Law. This author, like many others, suggests inevitability in computing power based on what has happened in the last 60 years in computing. |