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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

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Chapter 1. Electronic Computers

Chapter 2. Transistors and Integrated Circuits

Chapter 3. Logic Gates

Chapter 4. Sequential Machines

Chapter 5. Processors and Systems

Chapter 6. Input and Output

Chapter 7. Emerging Technologies

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Wolf, Marilyn
Marilyn Wolf is Farmer Distinguished Chair and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She received her BS, MS, and PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1980, 1981, and 1984, respectively. She was with AT&T Bell Laboratories from 1984 to 1989. She was on the faculty of Princeton University from 1989 to 2007. Her research interests included embedded computing, embedded video and computer vision, and VLSI systems. She has received the ASEE Terman Award and IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Education Award. She is a Fellow of the IEEE and ACM and an IEEE Computer Society Golden Core member.. She is the author of two successful Morgan Kaufmann textbooks on embedded systems: Computers as Components, Third Edition (2012; 4e under contract); and High-Performance Embedded Computing, Second Edition (2014).

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