I am no expert on computing power, but I recently crossed a recent concept that's quite interesting:
The idea that in the future, several hundreds to thousands and thousands of years into the future we will have the technology within computers to simulate entire universes, from supernovas, to gas giants, down to life and possibly consciousness itself of the beings and animals that live in this idea might be a possibility. (We are not 100% sure what creates consciousness, but this may change in the future). Assuming that we keep finding new methods and materials that will allow for greater processing power, this may happen. Silicon itself is said to be maxed out by the 2020s, hopefully by then we should move beyond silicon and would be using molecular computing such as graphene based chips or some other sort. According to Michio Kaku, after we move beyond molecular computing we may go deeper into Quantum computing.
The idea of a super computer with enough processing power to copy everything including how atoms and their protons and electrons interact with one another, our consciousness and our thoughts, the thoughts of quadrillions and quadrillions of animals and beings that exist throughout the universe. This computed universe will have a radius of 13.7 Billion Light years. According to http://www.universetoday.com/36302/a...-the-universe/ there should be between 10^78 to 10^82 atoms in the visible universe. You will also have to simulate even invisible things like dark matter and dark energy, law of thermodynamics as well as the 2nd law etc.
Processing power, back in the middle of the 20th century, it was doubling every 2-3 years, now its every 11 months or so.
What is the upper limit of Quantum computing?
Is there any other concept that may have more power than Quantum computing?
I think this technology maybe possible, but it would depend very heavily on whether there is an ultimate limit to processing power in the universe, if so what is that upper limit?
"Now Lloyd has applied the same approach to the Universe as a whole. “The ideas are cosmic but the physics is mundane,” he says, involving mostly well-established laws. The Universe’s energy is locked up primarily in matter according to E = mc2, and is basically constant. Taking rough estimates of the age and energy density of the Universe, and assuming that gravity’s total energy is equal in magnitude to that of matter, he finds that the Universe could have performed 10^120 basic operations, or ops, on all its bits so far.
Because entropy is closely related to temperature, he also imagines maxing out the entropy by turning all of the Universe’s matter into radiation and using the so-called blackbody radiation formula to get a temperature. Subtotal: 10^90 bits. If gravitational fields can contribute entropy, as theorists believe, the total could be much larger. They deduced years ago that a black hole’s entropy is proportional to its surface area. A more recent conjecture–that the universe itself stores information this way–leads Lloyd to a speculative grand total of 10^120 bits." Assuming that we could keep moores law going with future technologies, it would take till the middle of the 24th century before our laptops have acquired such power assuming that computing power continues to double every 11 months.
http://physics.aps.org/story/v9/st27
Sources and links greatly appreciated.
Other thoughts in regards to a simulation such as what you would like to use with such technology IF it becomes available are encouraged. Create a super realistic game? Create a near-perfect world or universe? A place to extend existing relationships? Or to turn imaginary friends into conscious beings that you can interact with? Perhaps to evade our death by downloading our consciousness into it?