Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Turing machines and V. Neumann architecture

Lately we've been learning what a turing machines is and how it works. Beside that we've also been studying V. Neumann's architecture. In this post I'll try to show how the turing machine concept is used to build modern computers. After studying about the topic I've found some similarities that show how many of the turing machine conepts are used as building blocks today. Because of the nature of a turing machine being a only a theory most of the concepts are only analogies, but, with some thinking, we are able to connect them to a V Neumann architecture.
 


After seeing all this you guys should definitely be able to tell that the V. Neumann architecture is pretty much a real life turing machine. That said, there are some analogies between them, for example program book (turing machine) and a computer program (V. Neumann); strip of tape and memory; read/write head (turing machine) and controlling cables (V. Neumann); the little box reading the tape and the CPU and so on. On the left you've got a cheat-sheet with the most important similarities.
Finally we could say that there are a lot of similarities between the two. This is because turing machines are building blocks for modern compuers, even quantum computers! Some say everything a computer can do a turing machine can do, but that changes with quantum computers, right? I don't know, but I think quantum computers can't do more things than a turing machine can, but more efficiently.

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