Tag Archives: stored program computer
On the one hand, a main theme here is theories of consciousness. On the other hand, it’s been almost eight years blogging, and I’ve covered my views pretty well in numerous posts and comment threads. Our understanding of consciousness currently seems stuck pending new discoveries, either in answering hard questions, or in providing entirely new paths.
A while back I determined to step away from debates (even blogs) that center on topics with no resolution. Religion is a big one, but theories of mind is another. Your view depends on your axioms. Unless (or until) science provides objective answers, everyone is just guessing.
But it’s been three-and-a-half years, and, well,… I have some notes…
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8 Comments | tags: AI, brain, brain mind problem, chaos theory, Cogito ergo sum, computer model, computer program, computers, consciousness, human brain, human consciousness, human mind, information theory, Isaac Asimov, mind, stored program computer, Theory of Consciousness, Von Neumann architecture | posted in Computers, Opinion, Science
Over the last few weeks I’ve written a series of posts leading up to the idea of human consciousness in a machine. In particular, I focused on the difference between a physical model and a software model, and especially on the requirements of the software model.
The series is over, I have nothing particularly new to add, but I’d like to try to summarize my points and provide an index to the posts in this series. It seems I may have given readers a bit of information overload — too much information to process.
Hopefully I can achieve better clarity and brevity here!
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26 Comments | tags: AI, brain, brain mind problem, chaos theory, computer model, computer program, computers, consciousness, human brain, human consciousness, human mind, information theory, mind, My brain is full, stored program computer, Theory of Consciousness, Von Neumann architecture | posted in Computers
We started with mathematical expressions, abstract algorithms, and the idea of code — a list of instruction steps in some code language. We touched on how all algorithms have an abstract state diagram (a flowchart) representing them. Then we looked briefly at the stored-program physical machines that execute code.
Before we go on to characterize the complexity of a computer, I want to take a look — very broadly — at how the computer operates overall. Specifically, look at another Yin-Yang pair: the computer’s operating system versus its applications.
This has a passing relevance to the computer’s complexity.
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20 Comments | tags: application code, computer program, computers, hardware, O/S, operating system, software, stored program computer, system code, user code | posted in Computers
We started with the idea of code — data consisting of instructions in a special language. Code can express an algorithm, a process consisting of instruction steps. That implies an engine that understands the code language and executes the steps in the code.
Last time we started with Turing Machines, the abstract computers that describe algorithms, and ended with the concrete idea of modern digital computers using stored-programs and built on the Von Neumann architecture.
Today we look into that architecture a bit…
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17 Comments | tags: address bus, algorithm, assembly language, bits, code, computer language, computer program, computers, CPU, data, data bus, RAM, source code, stored program computer, Von Neumann architecture | posted in Computers
Is that you, HAL?
Last time, in Calculated Math, I described how information — data — can have special characteristics that allow it to be interpreted as code, as instructions in some special language known to some “engine” that executes — runs — the code.
In some cases the code language has characteristics that make it Turing Complete (TC). One cornerstone of computer science is the Church-Turing thesis, which says that all TC languages are equivalent. What one can do, so can all the others.
That is where we pick up this time…
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1 Comment | tags: Alan Turing, algorithm, Church-Turing thesis, code, data, flowchart, lambda calculus, state diagram, stored program computer, Turing Machine, Universal Turing Machine, Von Neumann architecture | posted in Math
