Importance of Physics in Computer Science
To my knowledge, there is a lesser difference between Computer Science and Computer Engineering, Computer Engineering is basically the most hardware-centric discipline, with a lot of concepts focusing on computer architecture and digital logic that is more or less supported by ideas and applications rooted in electronics. This, in turn, is something Computer Science cannot ignore.
There are many important impacts of physics on computer science.
- Physics of spinning disks
The amount of data that can be stored and retrieved from spinning disk drives is directed by the speed at which they spin. The limit of that speed is obviously a material problem, but the physics of the spin and the direct impact of that spin speed on data storage. there are important choices to be made between disks that spin at 7200RPM or 10000RPM or 15000RPM. (Rotation per Minute)
2. Speed of Light
First of all the speed of light is 2.99 * 10⁸ m/s
299 792 458 meters per second (approximately 3,00,000 km/s)
The speed of light is straightly applicable to computer science in lots of means. It seems like an immense speed, but given the millions of calculations going on in a Control Processing Unit (CPU) or Graphical Processing Unit(GPU), within a fraction of a microsecond. Getting the calculation done in just fractions of microseconds is just possible because of the speed.
Same while conveying long-distance telecommunication, the speed of light is again directly relevant. All the fiber-optics wires connected in the system operate by sending light pulses. Again fiber-optics cables are of two types:
- Single Mode: For single-mode fiber-optic cable speed, no matter the data rate is at 100 Mbit/s or Gbit/s, the transmission distance can reach up to 5 km.
- Multi-Mode: For the multimode fiber optic cable speed and the transmitting distance limits are 100 Mbit/s for distance up to 2 km, Gbit/s up to 1000m, and 10 Gbit/s up to 550 m.
Every single light pulse is a bit of binary data (1 or 0).
3. Rate of heat generation in our Control Processing Unit (CPU) and Its effect on its conductivity. Basically this is the main reason having heat sync for your CPU.
Quantum Physics plays an important role in Physics
Quantum Physics: Quantum physics is a branch of science that focuses on Quantum Mechanics. It explains the theory of Quantum mechanics and Quantum Field Theory.
Quantum Mechanics: Quantum Mechanics is the set of principals used to explain the behavior of matter and energy. It explains the behavior of matter at the atomic scale.
Quantum mechanics might open the door to faster-than-light.
So with the help of the principles derived by Quantum Mechanics, Developers have developed “Quantum Computers”
What is a quantum computer?
A quantum computer is a type of computer that uses quantum mechanics so that it can perform certain kinds of computation more efficiently than a regular computer can.
So let me walk through what exactly it is in a simple example. Before introducing the Quantum Computer, lets first understand what is (non-quantum) Computers.
How our normal computer (non-quantum) stores information?
Our regular computer stores information in binary data (0's or 1's). Each unit in this series of 0’s and 1’s is called a bit. So, a bit can be set to either 0 or 1. Different types of information like number, text, and images are stored using this binary bit.
What about Quantum Computers?
Quantum Computers does not use Binary bits to store the information, but it uses something called Qubits. Computers that perform quantum computation are known as quantum computers. Quantum computers are believed to be able to solve certain computational problems, such as integer factorization, substantially faster than classical computers. It deals with topics that are considered science fiction by normal people like parallel universes, multiverse theory, etc.
It is a computing technology based on the laws of Quantum Physics, which deals with the behavior of energy and matter(At atomic level). A fully functional Quantum Computer would be able to perform multiple calculations simultaneously which would increase its speed a million times more than even the most powerful supercomputers today!
A 30-qubit quantum computer would equal the processing power of a conventional computer that could run at 10 teraflops (trillions of floating-point operations per second). Today’s typical desktop computers run at speeds measured in gigaflops (billions of floating-point operations per second).
A 1 teraFLOPS (TFLOPS) computer system is capable of performing one trillion (10^12) floating-point operations per second. The rate 1 TFLOPS is equivalent to 1,000 GFLOPS.
For example: If there are 4 bits, then these bits together can represent 2⁴=16 values in total but they can only hold 1 of these 16 values at a time.
But if there are 4 qubits, then these qubits together can hold of these 16 values simultaneously! That’s the power of Quantum Computing.
What are the Applications of Quantum Computing?
- Healthcare
- Finance
- Cybersecurity
- Agriculture
- Artificial Intelligence
There is a growing consensus today that many of the issues we are studying are so complex that only an experimental approach will lead to understanding. Advance in algorithmics, software engineering, and cognitive science. We need an alternative to the awkward term “science of computer science.” There now exists a focus group of scientific theories about computation, with many other areas working to add to that group. They hunger for understanding.
Believe me, the whole universe is full of Equations. We are surrounded by equations and formulas. Physics is love!
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