The book emphasizes the design of full-fledged, fully normalizing lambda calculus machinery, as opposed to the just weakly normalizing machines.

The book emphasizes the design of full-fledged, fully normalizing lambda calculus machinery, as opposed to the just weakly normalizing machines.

The Physics of Computing gives a foundational view of the physical principles underlying computers. Performance, power, thermal behavior, and reliability are all harder and harder to achieve as transistors shrink to nanometer scales. This book describes the physics of computing at all levels of abstraction from single gates to complete computer systems. It can be used as a course for juniors or seniors in computer engineering and electrical engineering, and can also be used to teach students in other scientific disciplines important concepts in computing. For electrical engineering, the book provides the fundamentals of computing that link core concepts to computing. For computer science, it provides foundations of key challenges such as power consumption, performance, and thermal. The book can also be used as a technical reference by professionals. - Links fundamental physics to the key challenges in computer design, including memory wall, power wall, reliability - Provides all of the background necessary to understand the physical underpinnings of key computing concepts - Covers all the major physical phenomena in computing from transistors to systems, including logic, interconnect, memory, clocking, I/O

Drawing on interviews with 15 leading scientists, the authors present an unexpected vision: the future of computing is a synthesis with nature.

One of the first books to thoroughly examine the subject, Quantum Computing Devices: Principles, Designs, and Analysis covers the essential components in the design of a "real" quantum computer. It explores contemporary and important aspects of quantum computation, particularly focusing on the role of quantum electronic devices as quantum gates.

Computing isn't only (or even mostly) about hardware and software; it's also about the ideas behind the technology. In Computing for Ordinary Mortals, computer scientist Robert St. Amant explains this "really interesting part" of computing, introducing basic computing concepts and strategies in a way that readers without a technical background can understand and appreciate. Each of the chapters illustrates ideas from a different area of computing, and together they provide important insights into what drives the field as a whole. St. Amant starts off with an overview of basic concepts as well as a brief history of the earliest computers, and then he traces two different threads through the fabric of computing. One thread is practical, illuminating the architecture of a computer and showing how this architecture makes computation efficient. St. Amant shows us how to write down instructions so that a computer can accomplish specific tasks (programming), how the computer manages those tasks as it runs (in its operating system), and how computers can communicate with each other (over a network). The other thread is theoretical, describing how computers are, in the abstract, machines for solving problems. Some of these ideas are embedded in much of what we do as humans, and thus this discussion can also give us insight into our own daily activities, how we interact with other people, and in some cases even what's going on in our heads. St. Amant concludes with artificial intelligence, exploring the possibility that computers might eventually be capable of human-level intelligence, and human-computer interaction, showing how computers can enrich our lives--and how they fall short.

This tutorial demystifies one of the most important yet poorly understood aspects of logic programming, the Warren Abstract Machine or WAM. The author's step-by-step construction of the WAM adds features in a gradual manner, clarifying the complex aspects of the design and providing the first detailed study of WAM since it was designed in 1983.Developed by David H. D. Warren, the WAM is an abstract (nonphysical) computer that aids in the compilation and implementation of the Prolog programming language and offers techniques for compiling and optimizing symbolic computing that can be generalized beyond Prolog. Although the benefits of the WAM design have been widely accepted, few have been able to penetrate the WAM. This lucid introduction defines separate abstract machines for each conceptually separate part of the design and refines them, finally stitching them together to make a WAM. An index presents all of the critical concepts used in the WAM. It is assumed that readers have a clear understanding of the operational semantics of Prolog, in particular, of unification and backtracking, but a brief summary of the necessary Prolog notions is provided.Contents: Introduction. Unification -- Pure and Simple. Flat Resolution. Prolog. Optimizing the Design. Conclusion. Appendixes.

William Aspray provides the first broad and detailed account of von Neumann's many different contributions to computing. John von Neumann (1903-1957) was unquestionably one of the most brilliant scientists of the twentieth century. He made major contributions to quantum mechanics and mathematical physics and in 1943 began a new and all-too-short career in computer science. William Aspray provides the first broad and detailed account of von Neumann's many different contributions to computing. These, Aspray reveals, extended far beyond his well-known work in the design and construction of computer systems to include important scientific applications, the revival of numerical analysis, and the creation of a theory of computing.Aspray points out that from the beginning von Neumann took a wider and more theoretical view than other computer pioneers. In the now famous EDVAC report of 1945, von Neumann clearly stated the idea of a stored program that resides in the computer's memory along with the data it was to operate on. This stored program computer was described in terms of idealized neurons, highlighting the analogy between the digital computer and the human brain. Aspray describes von Neumann's development during the next decade, and almost entirely alone, of a theory of complicated information processing systems, or automata, and the introduction of themes such as learning, reliability of systems with unreliable components, self-replication, and the importance of memory and storage capacity in biological nervous systems; many of these themes remain at the heart of current investigations in parallel or neurocomputing.Aspray allows the record to speak for itself. He unravels an intricate sequence of stories generated by von Neumann's work and brings into focus the interplay of personalities centered about von Neumann. He documents the complex interactions of science, the military, and business and shows how progress in applied mathematics was intertwined with that in computers. William Aspray is Director of the Center for the History of Electrical Engineering at The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Analyzes cognitive, social and technical issues of end user programming. Drawing on empirical research on existing end user systems, this text examines the importance of task-specific programming languages, visual application frameworks and collaborative work practices for end user computing.