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Authored by: PolR on Monday, July 23 2012 @ 01:14 PM EDT |
Why does the fact that no computer can run any
software without
becoming a different computer every time an electron moves
prevent me from
calling the movement of electrons a change in
machine
structure?
Because if you do you get an absurd conclusion.
This is pretty easy to see. Maybe you want me to spell out the obvious
absurdity? It is that by this logic no computer carries out all the instructions
required to run the program. Every instruction moves electrons and this happens
billions of times per second. How can you say the computer do something when
every computer becomes a different machine before being done? Do you see now how
absurd it is?
If the software were loaded blowing fuses in an array
of fuses, would you
concede that is a change in structure?
Stored
program computers are not programmed by blowing fuses. I don't see what this has
to do with the topic.
Maybe you are after a statement that you can make a
new special purpose machine to carry out a computation when you choose this type
of implementation? This is indeed the case. It doesn't follow that all
implementations of this same computation must be special purpose machines. There
are other ways to carry out computations and executing software in a stored
program computer is one of them.
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