Physics, Computer and
Information
Mahmoud Abdel-Salam,
IT dept.,
Faculty of Computer and Information System,
Mansoura University,
masalam99@yahoo.com,
mahmoud20@mans.edu.eg
Computers Today!
• we are surrounded by computers these days, from smart phones,
to LCD displays and etc., we rarely tend to look at all the physics
that are happening inside all of these computers
Physical Components of
Computer
• Motherboard (System board – Main board):
• The main circuit board of a PC
• Computer systems plug directly into the system board.
• CPU is normally housed on your system board
• Other items are attached to the system board, either directly
or via cables.
• The motherboard is considered the central nervous system
in the computer.
Physical Components of
Computer
• Chipset:
• The chipset is a series of chips attached directly to the
motherboard
• Controls the system and its capabilities.
• All components communicate with the processor through the
chipset
• Chipsets are not upgradeable without a new motherboard
Physical Components of
Computer
Moore's law
• The number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles
approximately every two years.
• Which results in:
• faster execution
• higher storage capacity.
Physical information
• Information itself defined as "that which can distinguish one thing
from another".
• Physical information  refers to information that is contained in
a physical system.
Physical information
• A holder of information  is a variable can have different
forms at different times.
• A piece of information is a particular fact about a thing's
identity or properties.
• A pattern of information (or form)  is the pattern or
content of an instance or piece of information.
Physical information
• An embodiment of information  is the thing whose essence is
a given instance of information.
• A representation of information  is an encoding of some
pattern of information within some other pattern or
instance.
Physical information
• An interpretation of information  is a decoding of a
pattern of information as being a representation of
another specific pattern or fact.
• An amount of information is a quantification of how much of a
given system's information content.
Physical information and entropy
• Entropy is simply that portion of the physical information
contained in a system.
• Quantifying classical physical information:
• For a system S, defined abstractly in such a way that it has N
distinguishable states, the amount of information I(S) contained in
the system can be said to be log(N).
Physical information and entropy
• if subsystem A has N distinguishable states and an independent
subsystem B has M distinguishable states, then the concatenated
system has NM distinguishable information content
I(AB) = log(NM) = log(N) + log(M) = I(A) + I(B).
Digital physics
• digital physics is a collection of physical theories in the universe
that described by information, and is therefore computable.
• is essentially informational and digital
• is essentially computable
• can be described digitally
• is itself a computer
Quantum computer
• A quantum computer is a computation device that makes
direct use of quantum-mechanical phenomena, such as
superposition to perform operations on data.
• digital computers require data to be encoded into binary digits
(bits), quantum computation uses qubits (quantum bits), which
Quantum computer
• A theoretical model is the quantum Turing machine.
• Quantum superposition  is a fundamental principle of
quantum mechanics that holds physical system.
• It is the ability of a quantum system to be in multiple states at the
same time.
Quantum computer
• The quantum properties can be used to represent and structure
data to perform operations with this data.
• large-scale quantum computers can be built, they will be able to
solve certain problems exponentially faster than any of our
current classical computers.
Optical computing
• Optical or photonic computing uses photons produced by
lasers or diodes for computation.
• Photons promise to allow a higher bandwidth than the electrons
used in conventional computers.
DNA Computer
• A nanocomputer that uses DNA to store information and perform
complex calculations.
• DNA could be used to solve complex mathematical problems.
• Adelman found a way to harness the power of DNA to solve the
Hamiltonian path problem (the traveling salesman problem).
DNA Computer
• The main benefit of using DNA computers to solve complex
problems is that different possible solutions are created all at
once (known as parallel processing)
• Humans and most electronic computers must attempt to solve
the problem one process at a time (linear processing/serially).
• DNA are of being a cheap, energy-efficient
Nanotechnology
• Nanotechnology is science, engineering, and technology
conducted at the nanoscale.
• Nanoscience and nanotechnology are the study and application
of extremely small things and can be used across all the other
science fields, such as chemistry, biology, physics, materials
science, and engineering.