I am curious when you think we will run out of atoms to make information systems.
How many billions of years you think that might take.
Of all the things to be limited by, that doesn't seem like a near term issue. Just an asteroid or two alone will provide resources beyond our dreams. And space travel is improving at a very rapid rate.
In the meantime, in terms of efficiency of using Earth atoms for information processing, there is still a lot space at the "bottom", as Feynman said. Our crude systems are limited today by their power waste. Small energy efficient systems, and more efficient heat shedding, will enable full 3D chips ("cubes"?) and vastly higher density of packing those.
The known limit for information for physical systems per gram, is astronomical:
• Bremermann’s limit : 10^47 operations per second, per gram.
Other interesting limits:
• Margolus–Levitin bound - on quantum state evolution
• Landauer’s principle - Thermodynamic cost of erasing (overwriting) one bit.
• Bekenstein bound: Maximum storage by volume.
Life will go through many many singularities before we get anywhere near hard limits.
How many billions of years you think that might take.
Of all the things to be limited by, that doesn't seem like a near term issue. Just an asteroid or two alone will provide resources beyond our dreams. And space travel is improving at a very rapid rate.
In the meantime, in terms of efficiency of using Earth atoms for information processing, there is still a lot space at the "bottom", as Feynman said. Our crude systems are limited today by their power waste. Small energy efficient systems, and more efficient heat shedding, will enable full 3D chips ("cubes"?) and vastly higher density of packing those.
The known limit for information for physical systems per gram, is astronomical:
• Bremermann’s limit : 10^47 operations per second, per gram.
Other interesting limits:
• Margolus–Levitin bound - on quantum state evolution
• Landauer’s principle - Thermodynamic cost of erasing (overwriting) one bit.
• Bekenstein bound: Maximum storage by volume.
Life will go through many many singularities before we get anywhere near hard limits.