more about the impact of computer science

more about the impact of computer science

more about the impact of computer science

In 1958, Chaim Pekeris completed a landmark project in computer science. as a physicist at the Weizmann Institute of Technology in Israel, he become fascinated with the relatively new science of quantum mechanics and its potential to explain from first principles the behaviour of atoms.

There was a problem however. The equation developed by Schrodinger that could do the job was too complex for mere mortals to handle. Using it to determine the electronic energy levels of a even a lowly helium atom was seemingly impossible.Chaim's task was monumental. He first had to persuade the Wiezmann Institute and a technical committee on Presario V5000 Battery including Einstein and Von Neumann, to build a computer. Einstein proved hard to persuade but was eventually won over by Von Neumann.

WEIZaC, Israel's first electronic computer was built between 1954 and 1954. according to Wikipedia, WEIZaC was an asynchronous computer operating on 40-bit words. Instructions consisted of 20-bits: an 8-bit instruction code and 12-bits for addressing. For a memory it had a magnetic drum that could store 1,024 words.

This program then kept WEIZaC busy for months, eventually producing a set of tables describing the energy levels of a helium atom, the first time this had been done accurately..So how has Moore's Law affected this process to Presario 2100 Battery , ask Koutschan and Zeilberger. They repeated Pekeris' project using the modern tools of computer science to see how they compare.

They say that the numeric computation--the work done by WEIZaC--can be completed in a fraction of a second on any laptop. Koutschan and Zeilberger say they were able to condense this part of the project, which took Pekeris at least 20-hours, into a 2-hour session. Of course the limiting factor here is not the Dell KD476 battery software but the 'wetware'. Which means that the next generation of improvements will either have to focus on improving the wetware or taking it out of the loop entirely.

That's a fascinating study and counterintuitive in some ways too. While it's easy to see the many orders of magnitude improvement that has improved hardware, it's clear from this work that the speed up from software is more limited. In particular, an order of magnitude improvement--from 20 hours to 2 hours--in the time it takes to do the algebra for this problem is a surprisingly small improvement over a 50 year period.

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