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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

Ultimate physical limits to computation

classification quant-ph
keywords physicalcomputationinformationlimitedlimitsprocessspeedultimate
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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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 6 Pith papers

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

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

    hep-th 2026-06 conditional novelty 6.5

    Late-time linear growth of holographic TEE is governed by an interior critical surface Ac whose existence is guaranteed by NEC under Kasner asymptotics, with vacuum maximizing real growth and minimizing imaginary part.

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

    hep-th 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    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.

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

    hep-th 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    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...

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

    hep-th 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    In asymptotically AdS black holes with space-like singularities, late-time linear growth of time-like entanglement entropy is governed by a critical extremal surface inside the event horizon, with growth rates bounded...

  5. A Timelike Quantum Focusing Conjecture

    hep-th 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    A timelike quantum focusing conjecture implies a complexity-based quantum strong energy condition and a complexity bound analogous to the covariant entropy bound for suitable codimension-0 field theory complexity measures.

  6. Holographic complexity of conformal fields in global de Sitter spacetime

    hep-th 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Holographic complexity of CFTs in global dS_d is computed via volume and action prescriptions in AdS foliation and brane setups, then compared to results from static and Poincare patches.