Physical Computing: Unifying Real Number Computation to Enable Energy Efficient Computing

Physical computing unifies real value computing including analog, neuromorphic, optical, and quantum computing. Many real-valued techniques show improvements in energy efficiency, enable smaller area per computation, and potentially improve algorithm scaling. These physical computing techniques suffer from not having a strong computational theory to guide application development in contrast to digital computation’s deep theoretical grounding in application development. We consider the possibility of a real-valued Turing machine model, the potential computational and algorithmic opportunities of these techniques, the implications for implementation applications, and the computational complexity space arising from this model. These techniques have shown promise in increasing energy efficiency, enabling smaller area per computation, and potentially improving algorithm scaling.