Talk:Indeterminacy in concurrent computation
Article for deletion?
I dunno, this article just sounds plain old confused and wrong to me; I'm tempted to suggest deletion. Arguing that a hung gate is a form of quantum indeterminacy is certainly a novel idea, but I think a whole lotta work would need to be done to prove this, in particular, ruling out purely classical explanations like ground bounce and what not. I doubt that anyone who actually designs real transistors for a living would agree with such an assessment. I'd need to see something other than handwaving to believe this. linas 04:19, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
Disputed statement
I don't believe this:
- Arbiters are designed to resolve this instability as rapidly as possible into a stable state, a process known as quantum decoherence
For many reasons. Resolution into stability is not decoherence. Metastability might theoretically be a result of superposition of states, but I have seen no evidence for this in practice.
See International Journal of Modern Physics C
Can Quantum Synchronizers Solve the Metastability Problem of Asynchronous Digital Systems?, Vol. 1, No. 4 (1990) 329-342. Reinhard Männer
Abstract:
- The synchronization of asynchronous signals can lead to metastable behavior and malfunction of digital circuits. It is believed — but not proved — that metastability principally cannot be avoided. Confusion exists about its practical importance. This paper shows that metastable behavior can be avoided by usage of quantum synchronizers in principle, but not in practice, and that conventional synchronizers unavoidably show metastable behavior in principle, but not in practice, if properly designed
--CSTAR 20:57, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
This is indeed curious. First of all the above abstract talks about synchronizers instead of arbiters. Does the article explain the difference? Not much confusion exists about the practical importance of metastability for arbiters. Conventional arbiters unavoidably show metastable behavior in principle and also in practice, if properly designed. The metastability of properly designed arbiters has been measured and well qualified many times in the literature. Is this article informed about the literature? Has anyone ever cited this article? Thanks,--Carl Hewitt 21:09, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
POV label
I slapped the POV label on this article for the following reasons:
- This article appears to be about quantum indeterminacy in electronic circuits, and not in computation in general.
- This article fails to mention competing theories for the cause of that indeterminacy.
- This article fails to mention the experimental status of the various competing theories.
- The references given appear to have nothing to do with the actual subject of the article.
Please note that this very same issue has already been argued on the talk page to metastability in electronics, which has now been moved to arbiter (electronics) (that is, see Talk:arbiter (electronics).) linas 14:25, 19 October 2005 (UTC)