Universal Field Machine that Computes Beyond the Turing Limit
Julián M. Fernández
Electronic mail address: fernande@venus.fisica.unlp.edu.ar.
Physics Department,
National University of La Plata,
C.C. 67, 1900 La Plata, Argentina
Abstract
A model of an idealized machine is proposed that makes use of various "physical" fields to perform computations. Its computational power surpasses that of a Turing machine, but the set of functions that it computes is still countable (on the contrary, analogic computation can compute any function, i.e., a noncountable set). As a major difference with analogic computation, the field machine has the important advantage of being programmable (i.e., universal field machines exist), and because of this, it is possible for a hypothetical operator of such a machine to know which problem the machine solves.
