CIS 6930.3753X, Spr. '02 - Physical Limits of Computing - http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~mpf/physlim

Announcements: (shift-reload to refresh)

Current announcements relating to the course will be posted here, as well as e-mailed to the class mailing list. However, please both read your email and check this page often, in case we forget to put something in both places.

Spring 2002:

(3/14/02) If you have not been receiving messages from me via the class email list, then you've missed a lot of announcements that weren't posted here. Contact the TAs to get added to the list ASAP, and check the mailing list archives once you get on to see what you missed.

(1/11/02) A test message has been sent to the class email list. If you did not get it, then either you did not turn in a student information sheet yet, in which case you should turn it in Friday, or we didn't get your address right, please email jeffking@ufl.edu with your correct address so he can fix the email list. You should also be able to add yourself to the list; see this page.

(1/9/02) A detailed description of the course grading policy has been posted.

(1/8/02) The course webpage has now been almost entirely updated for the Spring 2002 semester, including the course calendar, except for the details of the weekly assignments.

(1/8/02) Due to a clerical error by department staff, the enrollment cap was set to 50 students instead of 100. This has now been fixed. So, if you tried to register for the course previously and it was full, please try again! There is plenty of room now!

(1/8/02) If you were scared away from the course because it looked like it had too many required books, please come back! Those books are not really all required, due to the flexible format for assignments. Plus, much material can be found on the web. Come to the first day of class, and I will explain.

(11/1/01) The Spring 2002 section has been listed with the registrar, and advertising flyers for the course have been posted in many departments around campus. The registration cap this year will be 100 students. Teaching assistants are being recruited. The new course web page for this year is still under construction; so far the only completely up-to-date sections are the advertising flyer PDF file, the new syllabus, this announcements page, the basic course info, and the new class mailing list. Students are encouraged to sign up for the mailing list even before the class starts, so you can receive early announcements about textbooks, course content, etc.

Spring 2000:

(4/21) For students who may be interested in doing a senior project or graduate research with me at some point, I am maintaining a list of suggested project topics at this link. Most (but not all) of these are related to topics discussed in this course.

(4/4) Some students have asked about combining the extra credit project with the last homework assignment (HW9). The policy will be: If you do the extra credit project, you have the option of skipping any one homework, and your grade will be the average of the other 8 HWs, plus the extra credit bonus. If you do not do the extra credit project, your grade will be the average of HWs 1-9. I will try to email current averages shortly.

(3/31) To the extent that we have extra lecture time, there will be extra coverage of the following topics, chosen by class vote: (1) Classical cryptography including the RSA algorithm, (2) optical/photonic computing and switching, (3) Quantum information/communication theory including quantum "teleportation."

(3/3) An extra-credit research paper/presentation assignment has been announced. See this link for details.

(2/28) Our TA, Hitakshi Buch, is in the process of posting the electronically-submitted student homework papers onto the web, under this link. If you don't want your work posted, let her know.

(2/23) An instance of plagiarism in the class has been noticed. I shouldn't need to tell any of you that presenting copied text as your writing is very wrong. Further instances will be severely dealt with. See my email messages and the Student Guide on Academic Honesty.

(2/10) I just received from Seth Lloyd (one of the gurus of quantum computing) a preprint of a new article by him on physical limits of computation! Check it out.

(2/8) I have created a MAX instance for the class. I encourage everyone to log in there and participate in the online discussions!

(2/8) General advice to improve your grade on homework assignments: (1) Refer to material learned from both lectures and readings. Mention more than one reading. (2) Cite your sources (especially if you used outside sources). (3) Include your own thoughts, reflections, opinions; don't just repeat facts learned. (4) If you try to explain or justify something, be sure the argument is clear.

(1/28) If you want to view readings in Postscript format, there is a free Postscript viewer for Windows 95/98 at ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/aladdin/gs550/gsv26550.exe. Let me know whether it works for you. However, I am trying to mirror the readings in PDF; let me know if I missed one.

(1/24) If you email your assignment, please just include your paper in-line in the body of the email as plain text (with line breaks every 70 columns), or else include an attachment or URL of a file in one of the following formats: plain ASCII text (.txt) (with line breaks every 70 columns), Postscript (.ps), PDF, or HTML. Do not send MS Word (.doc) or RTF format, as it is inconvenient for me to read such at present. Use "Save as...", "Print to file", or some other software tool to do the conversion from your favorite word processor format, if needed.

(1/17) If you have trouble accessing or printing the readings on reserve, please report the problem both to me and also directly to WebLUIS.

(4/12) A very special treat: Ed Fredkin is flying down from Boston to give a guest lecture in our class this Friday! Believe me, you don't want to miss it. I will obtain a copy of his slides for future reference.

(4/4) I will be at Sandia National Lab next Wednesday for discussions between them and the College of Engineering about starting a "Multidisciplinary Nanosystems Facility" here at UF. Rather than canceling class completely, I will see if I can pre-record a lecture.

(3/31) Tuesday, Apr. 4, at 4:00 pm, in 100 NEB (New Engineering Bldg.) there will be a talk by David Nickles from the Chemistry & Materials Science Dept. of U. Alabama Tuscaloosa on "Materials Science Directed at Pushing the Technological Limits of Magnetic Tape Technology". I think it will be interesting, and in the spirit of our class, to learn about the known limits on magnetic data storage densities. Please consider attending this talk if it fits in your schedule.

(2/8) Today's office hour is being rescheduled from 8th period to 6th period. Remember, you can always schedule a separate time to meet with me as well.

(2/6) The readings for weeks 5 and 6 are now mostly ready. More will be added later, and the reserve items may take a few more days to appear. But go ahead and start reading the others to prepare for this week's lecture.

(2/6) Last week's (week 4) readings are now stable. Any reserve items mentioned that haven't appeared yet should appear in the next couple of days. You should be all set for the written assignment due this Friday (2/11). Let me know if you would like any additional sources.

(2/2) This week's readings are beginning to take shape. There are only a couple of readings available online so far, but they are good ones. I'll be gathering others over the next few days.

(1/31) The HW3 due date is being postponed from today to Wednesday. I need a somewhat less constrained schedule than usual for this week's material, and I thought I'd pass that along. If you already turned in your HW3 assignment, you may revise it and turn it in Wednesday. HW4 will also be postponed to next Friday.

(1/26) Apparently the readings by Schaller and Meindl for this week were not scanned in as requested. I have requested again, but in the meantime they are available in hardcopy from the circulation desk at Marston; you can check them out for 2 hours to photocopy them. Ask for IEEE Spectrum (TK1.I15), June 1997, and Proceedings of the IEEE (TK 5700.I6) vol. 84 no. 4.

(1/24) The Feynman Lectures on Computation are now in stock at the UF bookstore, along with all the other recommended books for the course.

(1/21) An initial version of the readings for week 3 is now available.

(1/20) I added some comments to the list of readings for week 2. I am going to skip the lecture on analog computing, but you can still read and write about it.

(1/19) I added a better (more introductory) Bekenstein article on entropy bounds to the collection on reserve, it should appear in a couple of days. (Too late to read for the week 1 assignment, but it's there for those who are interested.)

(1/18) The readings for week 2 are available.

(1/18) There are uncompressed PS and PDF copies of the Bilardi & Preparata article (highly recommended) now available.

I have requested the Feynman Lectures on Computation book to be placed on 2-hour/overnight course reserve at Marston. However, it will be a little while before they have it.

The UF library is having sporadic computer trouble. If you can't access the readings on reserve, try again later.

My office hours are now tentatively announced, on the course home page.

If you haven't gotten email about the course yet, either you haven't turned in a student info sheet in class, or else I couldn't read your email address on it. Please contact me to get on the class mailing list.

There is now an "announcements" section on the course home page!