Feynman Lectures On Computation (Frontiers in Physics)

When, in 1984–86, Richard P. Feynman gave his famous course on computation at the California Institute of Technology, he asked Tony Hey to adapt his lecture notes into a book. Although led by Feynman, the course also featured, as occasional guest speakers, some of the most brilliant men in science at that time, including Marvin Minsky, Charles Bennett, and John Hopfield. Although the lectures are now thirteen 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 such as reversible logic gates and quantum computers. Cover Frontispiece Title Page Copyright Contents Editor's Foreword by Tony Hey Preface by Richard Feynman 1. Introduction to Computers 1.1: The File Clerk Model 1.2: Instruction sets 1.3: Summary 2. Computer Organization 2.1: Gates and Combinational Logic 2.2: The Binary Decoder 2.3: More on Gates: Reversible Gates 2.4: Complete Sets of Operators 2.5: Flip-Flops and Computer Memory 2.6: Timing and Shift Registers 3. The Theory of Computation 3.1: Effective Procedures and Computability 3.2: Finite State Machines 3.3: The Limitations of Finite State Machines 3.4: Turing Machines 3.5: More on Turing Machines 3.6: Universal Turing Machines and the Halting Problem 3.7 Computability 4. Coding and Information Theory 4.1: Computing and Communication Theory 4.2: Error Detecting and Correcting Codes 4.3: Shannon's Theorem 4.4: The Geometry of Message Space 4.5: Data Compression and Information 4.6: Information Theory 4.7: Further Coding Techniques 4.8: Analogue Signal Transmission 5. Reversible Computation and the Thermodynamics of Computing 5.1: The Physics of Information 5.2: Reversible Computation and the Thermodynamics of Computing 5.3: Computation: Energy Cost versus Speed 5.4: The General Reversible Computer 5.5: The Billiard Ball Computer 5.6: Quantum Computation 6. Quantum Mechanical Computers 6.1: Introduction 6.2: Computation With a Reversible Machine 6.3: A Quantum Mechanical Computer 6.4: Imperfections and Irreversible Free Energy Loss 6.5: Simplifying the Implementation 6.6: Conclusions 6.7: References 7. Physical Aspects of Computation A Caveat from the Editors 7.1: The Physics of Semiconductor Devices 7.2: Energy Use and Heat Loss in Computers 7.3: VLSI Circuit Construction 7.4: Further Limitations on Machine Design Afterword: Memories of Richard Feynman Suggested Reading Index 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 compatibility, 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 the complexities of your solutions - for the fun of it - then one day you'll turn around and discover that nobody actually did that one! And that's the way to become a computer scientist." Adaptations of lecture notes from Feynman's 1983-1986 courses on computation at the California Institute of Technology