Foreword by Bill Gates.................................................................................... vii
Editor’s Preface...................................................................................................ix
Feynman’s Preface...........................................................................................xix
Author and Editor Biographies......................................................................xxi
Contributors................................................................................................... xxiii
1 Introduction to Computers....................................................................... 1
2 Computer Organization.......................................................................... 19
3 The Theory of Computation................................................................... 47
4 Coding and Information Theory........................................................... 85
5 Reversible Computation and the Thermodynamics of
Computing............................................................................................... 125
6 Quantum Mechanical Computers....................................................... 169
7 Quantum Computing 40 Years Later.................................................. 193
John Preskill
8 Physical Aspects of Computation....................................................... 245
9 The Future of Computing beyond Moore’s Law...............................311
John Shalf
10 Feynman on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.......... 333
Eric Mjolsness
Biography
The late Richard P. Feynman was Richard Chace Tolman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1965 for his work on the development of quantum electrodynamics, and made many other fundamental contributions to physics. What is less well-known is his contribution to computer science with his ideas about quantum computing. He was one of the most famous and beloved figures of the twentieth century, both in physics and in the public arena.
Tony Hey is Chief Data Scientist at the UK’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory at Harwell. After an academic career including Dean of Engineering at the University of Southampton in the UK, he became Director of the UK’s pioneering eScience initiative. After 10 years as a Vice President in Microsoft Research in Redmond in the US, he returned to the UK and now leads a group applying Deep Learning neural networks to the analysis of experimental scientific data. He is also co-author of The Computing Universe: A Journey through a Revolution, a popular introduction to the development of computer science.
