CIS 6930.3753X Spr.'02
Readings for Part I: Course Introduction
Moore's Law vs. Known Physics, and Background you'll need

General advice on reading assignments:

Generally, for this class, don't feel that you absolutely must read every single suggested reading. You probably won't have time. Skim through the readings, and then read more thoroughly, at your leisure, the ones that you think you will get a lot out of.  However, do please try to read as much as you can, to maximize your learning.

If you attend all the lectures and pay close attention, you should already know most of what you need to do a satisfactory (though maybe not excellent) job on a short paper covering the week's material. But still, for each lecture, you should try to also read at least a few of its corresponding readings, and as many of the others as you have time for.

Also, don't worry if you don't understand every bit of what you read. In this course, we will be reading materials that span a wide range of levels of depth and sophistication, and not everyone will understand every phrase and formula in every paper. (Not even myself!) Just skim over any elements that you don't comprehend, and try to get what you can out of the remainder of the article.

Try to read some of the readings for each lecture either shortly before that lecture, or soon afterwards (before the next lecture), so that you can more easily relate the readings to the lecture in your mind.

If you are having trouble obtaining one of the readings, please let me know.

Index to the below:

Lecture 1 (Course Intro): Moore's Law vs. Known Physics:

The following section of my manuscript gives some perspective connected with today's lecture, relating to what we'll be doing in part V of the course on reversible computing. Moore's Law.  The following are Gordon's Moore's own articles on Moore's Law, in chronological order.  The last one is available online, and we will have the others scanned to the course-reserve website so you can read them first-hand. Here are some random other miscellaneous press & trade articles, in order of date, on the future prospects for Moore's Law.  New ones come out all the time in various print & online technical magazines.  If you come across any newer ones, or any relevant articles from the research literature, feel free to let us know, and we can add them to the list.  Also, some of these may already be available online. Here are the semiconductor industry's official projections (actually, requirements) for the next 15 years, straight from the horse's mouth, as it were. We will delve more deeply into the roadmap later; for now just read these introductory sections to get the gist of what is going on.

Here is a funny article on an interesting consequence of Moore's Law:

Despite the occasional bits of far-out speculation in this book (e.g. I find Kurzweil's argument that AIs will have religious experiences somewhat unconvincing), I find much of this book to be scientifically plausible, well-researched, and quite interesting.  Chapter 1 discusses Moore's Law. Status of known physics.  I am collecting references to articles and books that discuss the present and future state of known physics.  I have read a lot of sources on this, but I don't have too many of them listed yet.  Let me know if you have any other suggestions.

This first book is a concise, mathematical summary of all the fundamental theories making up present-day consensus physics, except for general relativity.  Read it if you want to get a feel for just how much of physics we're not getting into in this course, and get the gist of how it all works.

The following readings address the prospects for unifying general relativity with the rest of physics.  (A long-sought goal.)

Lecture 2: Basic Physics Background You'll Need to Know

As for additional readings, any good introductory college physics textbook will do, and will be useful to you throughout the semester as a reference.  Here is the textbook I used myself when I took the subject circa 1987.  I think it's still excellent.  (This stuff hasn't changed much in the last hundred years anyway.)  I'm sure you can find many other textbooks of comparable quality in the library.

Lecture 3: Basic Quantum Theory

In the below lists, "(text)" reminds you that the indicated book is one of the recommended course textbooks that are available at the Hub bookstore. Some textbooks on quantum mechanics that I own & recommend.  You might borrow one of them from me or from the library. One of Zurek's many articles explaining the point that apparent "wavefunction collapse" can be perfectly well explained as an expected emergent phenomenon, not as a departure from the rest of quantum theory. Advanced students with a good physics background might want to try tackling Warren Smith's notes on Quantum Mechanics (below) from his course, although these are rather dense and difficult.

Lectures 4+5: The Nature of Information and Entropy

First, stuff by me: In section 3 of the following article, I proposed a definition of entropy as "infropy that cannot be reversibly uncomputed (for whatever reason) by a given entity."  This definition also obeys a second law, and is useful in describing the thermodynamics of computation, but it is difficult to make it quantitative.  This alternative concept of entropy is what I am now calling "effective entropy" in this year's lectures. Stuff by other people, from the recommended books for the course: The following book is a collection of articles relating to the nature of entropy and information, with an emphasis on the quest to resolve the famous "Maxwell's demon" paradox of thermodynamics.  It has lots of interesting articles in it.  But you may especially want to read the articles I've noted below.  I will put this book on reserve at Marston. Those who were interested in Noether's theorem, relating conservation laws to physical symmetries, should see www.emmynoether.com for more details.

I mentioned in class Ed Fredkin's quest to find a fully discrete model of physics.  If you are interested in reading more about it, he has posted a variety of his (finished and unfinished) writings at http://www.digitalphilosophy.org.

Lecture 6: Basic Computer Science Concepts You'll Need

Those students who don't already have a thorough background in Computer Science might want to familiarize themselves with some of the major concepts of computation theory: If you want to read a whole book on this topic, here are some recommendations: And students without knowledge of the basics of semiconductor technology should begin catching up by reading: