Will we reach a maximum computing speed?
Humans have faced a lot of barriers throughout our history. We also have a good record of breaking these barriers. We broke big barriers by from flying in airplanes to breaking land speed records! We also saw this in our computer processing speed. In fact we are doing it at such a rapid pace, that it is really becoming more difficult to up the the game! But the real questions is will we find a barrier we cannot cross in our computer's processing speed?
Man have met with barriers that we just can’t cross (or even reach). A good example of this is the speed of light. The question is will we ever reach that limit with our computer’s processing speed? We need to look at the factors that can limit the increase in our computation speed of our standard computer. The first limit is the speed of electricity. Our modern standard, house computer, uses a system of circuits full of transistors. The transistors have logic gates that change and process the bits of data. In simpler terms the more transistors per square centimeter the more processing power you have. This is because there is more transistors to handle more bits of data. We know that speed = distance/time, and the speed of electricity stays (in perfect circumstances) constant. This means that we need to decrease the space between our transistors to decrease the computational time. We also need to plug in more of these transistors.
So the logical option is to shrink the size of our transistors. This was for the last 40 years the “go to” way to increase our processing speed. This works nice until you get too small. If we could shrink our transistors to almost atomic size, then quantum mechanic’s weird rules would apply to our computer system. Weird things like the uncertainty of the position of an electron and quantum tunnelling would ruin the whole system. To explain the problem better, imagine an electron appearing in front of a logic gate and the disappearing before going through it! This would mean that we will not get any meaningful data.
We are also facing another problem when squeezing more transistors in a small space. This problem is heat! We all know that electronic equipment builds up heat when conducting electricity. This heat can damage the circuits of the computer or mess with the logic gates! Imagine the heat that billions of transistors would generate that was almost atomically big on the surface of our current processing units! This heat would also in turn limit the speed of processing information. So to answer our question yes, there is a limit to our computational speed. But only with this technique. Theoretically speaking, if we were to use a different technique to process bits of data, we would then possibly achieve faster computational speed!
Now what other techniques can we use?
Well the first option is to use fiber optics. This is a faster and more constant in terms of speed than electricity! It also generates less heat than that of our standard home computer! The problem with this type of computation is the size and the amount of transistors in the computer. Engineers have created a very small transistor for the fiber optic computer, but can only operate efficiently at extremely cooled conditions. This cooling thing will be a drag for the average home computer user! But more research is in developing better and more efficient optic fiber computers!
Our second option would be quantum computers! Now this is personally what I think will be the future of computing! We are unsure of a particle’s state in quantum mechanics! It could have a up spin down spin or both! We can use this uncertainty to our advantage. Each particle is known as a cubit. What will make this quantum computer faster than the standard computer is this cubits that can be on and off at the same time! This would mean that we can calculate two parts of a hard problem at the same time. This makes quantum computing powerful. But once again we have a temperature problem! This computer should be kept at a extreme cool temperature to protect the computers quantum state. If the quantum state changes, the whole computer is basically useless! More research is needed to make this quantum computer more home computer user friendly!
The verdict:
We can see clearly that there is a maximum top computational speed with our current computational technique. This does not mean that we cannot break this limit! It is clear that we need to use another system. Our system is kind of old and has been used for a long time. Luckily engineers are always looking for new and more effective ways to improve current systems. I believe that we can break this barrier (If we get to that point) of our top computational speed.
What do you think? Do you think that we will reach a computational speed limit that we cannot break? Leave a comment below and upvote and follow me if you liked what you read.
And as always
Thanks for reading!
Some good reads:
Quantum computing.
Moore's law
The next 100 years computer development
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That will be the day when all of us will have a cuantum computer in our houses!
The heating problem can be rezolved by applying a tube that is run inside by liquid nitrogen to cool off the sistem.
Any brake in the tube could freeze the computer literally. But is just and ideea tha I was thinking, I'm not an expert.
Very informative.
There's a theory that we'll achieve warp speed inside a computer someday...before anything else.
Interesting post, I do not know much of the technical stuff inside computers, but do know that it works a lot better than my younger days. Keep up the good posts @stormblaze!
I agree with you concerning quantum computers. Concerning the qubits, there are actually construction where you have more than 2 levels. A usual qubit is a mixture of '0' and '1' states, but there are generalizations where the qubits are admixtures of '0', '1', '2',..., 'N' states that give more options.