What Are the Limits of Conventional Computing.doc

What Are the Limits of Conventional Computing 常規計算的界限？ CHARLES SEIFE） At first glance, the ultimate limit of computation seems to be an engineering issue. How much energy can you put in a chip without melting it? How fast can you flip a bit in your silicon memory? How big can you make your computer and still fit it in a room? These questions don’t seem terribly profound. 乍看之下，極限計算似乎是一個工程學的問題。您可以在一塊晶片中注入多少能量，使之不融化呢？您又能多快速的在晶片中運轉記憶體？您能夠擁有體積多大的電腦，並且還能它安置在一個房間裡？這些問題似乎並不難懂。In fact, computation is more abstract and fundamental than figuring out the best way to build a computer. This realization came in the mid-1930s, when Princeton mathematicians Alonzo Church and Alan Turing showed—roughly speaking—that any calculation involving bits and bytes can be done on an idealized computer known as a Turing machine. By showing that all classical computers are essentially alike, this discovery enabled scientists and mathematicians to ask fundamental questions about computation without getting bogged down in the minutiae of computer architecture. 事實上，如何計算比如何更有效地製造一台電腦，更為基礎且抽象。這種認知源自於年代中期，普林斯頓大學數學家亞倫佐（Alonzo Church）和亞蘭（Alan Turing）表示，粗略，任何涉及計算位元和位元組的理想式電腦稱為杜林機。因此，所有的傳統電腦基本上都十分相似，這一發現使科學家和數學家提出一個有關計算的根本問題，而非陷入細微的電腦體系結構中。For example, theorists can now classify computational problems into broad categories. P problems are those, broadly speaking, that can be solved quickly, such as alphabetizing a list of names. NP problems are much tougher to solve but relatively easy to check once you’ve reached an answer. An example is the traveling salesman problem, finding the shortest possible route through a series of locations. All known algorithms for getting an answer take lots of computing power, and even relatively small versions might be out of reach of any classical computer. Mathematicians have shown that if you could come up with a quick and easy shortcut to solving any one of the hardest type of NP problems, you’d be able to crack them all. In effect, the NP problems would turn into P pr