10.4 A UNIVERSAL TURING MACHINE
Consider the following argument against Turing’s thesis: “A Turing machine as presented in Definition 9.1 is a special-purpose computer. Once δ is defined, the machine is restricted to carrying out one particular type of computation. Digital computers, on the other hand, are general-purpose machines that can be programmed to do different jobs at different times. Consequently, Turing machines cannot be considered equivalent to general-purpose digital computers.”
This objection can be overcome by designing a reprogrammable Turing machine, called a universal Turing machine. A universal Turing machine Mu is an automaton that, given as input the description of any Turing machine M and a string w, can simulate the computation ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access