The Kernel Hacker's Bookshelf: Ultimate Physical Limits of Computation

Posted Jul 3, 2008 18:03 UTC (Thu) by mcortese (guest, #52099)
Parent article: The Kernel Hacker's Bookshelf: Ultimate Physical Limits of Computation

So what? It only proves the limits of a 1-kg block of matter, assuming that it will be a reasonable piece of hardware for a laptop.

But by the time we reach the storage limit (to take one), we may have a different concept of what a "laptop" is. For example it could be the union of a 1-kg device with no storage at all, linked to a physically large storage located somewhere far away, with a terabitpersecond wireless connection.

What Dr. Lloyd calls his "Ultimate Laptop", is indeed bound to the current understanding of what a laptop is, which reduces his work back to a mere discussion of the applicability of Moore's Law to a particular manufacturing assumption.

Whether you believe or not that humankind will always find ways to perpetuate Moore's Law through a shift to new techniques, for sure it won't be this paper to give you any proof.