Asked by: Toby Kristen, Tonbridge
The laws of physics stop computers getting faster forever. Computers calculate at the tick of an internal clock, so for many years manufacturers made transistors smaller and clocks faster to make them perform more computations per second. However, conventional electronics get too hot if you make them calculate too fast, which is why we no longer see clock speeds increasing much. Instead we now have more and more ‘cores’ – lots of processors all calculating in parallel – to let them do more work in the same time.
Scientists have calculated fundamental limits on maximum speed and storage achievable by computers. In order to reach those theoretical limits, you may need to use black holes as quantum computers, and they would probably evaporate in a puff of Hawking radiation too quickly to allow them to calculate very much.
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