The Physics of Computing

The Physics of Computing gives a foundational view of the physical principles underlying computers. Performance, power, thermal behavior, and reliability are all harder and harder to achieve as transistors shrink to nanometer scales. This book describes the physics of computing at all levels of abstraction from single gates to complete computer systems.

It can be used as a course for juniors or seniors in computer engineering and electrical engineering, and can also be used to teach students in other scientific disciplines important concepts in computing. For electrical engineering, the book provides the fundamentals of computing that link core concepts to computing. For computer science, it provides foundations of key challenges such as power consumption, performance, and thermal. The book can also be used as a technical reference by professionals.

• Links fundamental physics to the key challenges in computer design, including memory wall, power wall, reliability
• Provides all of the background necessary to understand the physical underpinnings of key computing concepts
• Covers all the major physical phenomena in computing from transistors to systems, including logic, interconnect, memory, clocking, I/O

Marilyn Wolf is Elmer E. Koch Professor of Engineering and Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. She received her BS, MS, and PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University. She was with AT&T Bell Laboratories from 1984 to 1989, was on the faculty of Princeton University from 1989 to 2007 and was Farmer Distinguished Chair in Embedded Computing Systems and GRA Eminent Scholar at the Georgia Institute of Technology from 2007 to 2019. Her research interests include cyber-physical systems, Internet-of-Things, embedded computing, embedded computer vision, and VLSI systems. She has received the IEEE Computer Society Goode Memorial Award, the ASEE Terman Award, and IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Education Award. She is a Fellow of the IEEE and ACM and a Golden Core member of IEEE Computer Society. Professor Wolf is the author of several successful Morgan Kaufmann textbooks: Computers as Components, Fifth Edition (2022); High-Performance Embedded Computing, Second Edition (2014); The Physics of Computing, First Edition (2016); and Embedded System Interfacing, First Edition (2019).