February 2015
Intermediate to advanced
300 pages
9h 40m
English
Like energy, the term information is both self-evident and abstract. The chapter begins by outlining the formal Shannon definition of the measure of information and provides several illustrations from language, materials systems, and the living cell. For example, it is estimated that an Escherichia coli cell during its 40-minute reproduction process must generate about 1011 output bits. Then given the measure of information, an elementary general-purpose information processor is defined and used as a vehicle from which to estimate its overall performance based on the limiting transistor/interconnect parameters developed previously in Chapters 2 and 4. In particular, it is shown ...