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Ultimate physical limits to computation

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arxiv quant-ph/9908043 v3 pith:GGXF7EGO submitted 1999-08-13 quant-ph

classification quant-ph
keywords physicalcomputationinformationlimitedlimitsprocessspeedultimate
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal

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abstract

Computers are physical systems: what they can and cannot do is dictated by the laws of physics. In particular, the speed with which a physical device can process information is limited by its energy and the amount of information that it can process is limited by the number of degrees of freedom it possesses. This paper explores the physical limits of computation as determined by the speed of light $c$, the quantum scale $\hbar$ and the gravitational constant $G$. As an example, quantitative bounds are put to the computational power of an `ultimate laptop' with a mass of one kilogram confined to a volume of one liter.

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Cited by 3 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Complexity measures in QFT and constrained geometric actions

    hep-th 2019-08 reject novelty 7.0 of 10

    The authors claim to rule out inhomogeneous complexity costs such as F_kappa and F_sigma^2 and to single out F_⟨H^2⟩ as the canonical complexity measure, but the no-go proof is incomplete.

  2. Linear Growth of Holographic Time-like Entanglement Entropy and Kasner exponents

    hep-th 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.5 of 10

    Late-time TEE growth in asymptotically AdS black holes with space-like singularities is governed by a critical extremal surface inside the horizon, with real/imaginary growth rates bounded by Schwarzschild-AdS under e...

  3. Page transition for the complexity of an evaporating black hole

    hep-th 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    The complexity of radiation from an evaporating black hole is argued to undergo a sharp Page-like transition, dominated after the Page time by the volume of an island in the entanglement wedge.

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