digital computer

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digital computer

A computer that performs calculations and logical operations with quantities represented as digits, usually in the binary number system.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

digital computer

(Computer Science) an electronic computer in which the input is discrete rather than continuous, consisting of combinations of numbers, letters, and other characters written in an appropriate programming language and represented internally in binary notation. Compare analog computer

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

dig′ital comput′er

a computer that processes information in digital form. Compare analog computer.

[1940–45]

digital computer

A computer working with data represented in digital form, usually binary 0s and 1s.

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Noun

digital computer - a computer that represents information by numerical (binary) digits

bbs, bulletin board, bulletin board system, electronic bulletin board - a computer that is running software that allows users to leave messages and access information of general interest

computer, computing device, computing machine, data processor, electronic computer, information processing system - a machine for performing calculations automatically

file server - (computer science) a digital computer that provides workstations on a network with controlled access to shared resources

mainframe, mainframe computer - a large digital computer serving 100-400 users and occupying a special air-conditioned room

minicomputer - a digital computer of medium size

multiprocessor - a computer that uses two or more processing units under integrated control

microcomputer, PC, personal computer - a small digital computer based on a microprocessor and designed to be used by one person at a time

von Neumann machine - any digital computer incorporating the ideas of stored programs and serial counters that were proposed in 1946 by von Neumann and his colleagues

workstation - a desktop digital computer that is conventionally considered to be more powerful than a microcomputer

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Given a large but finite amount of time, a Turing machine is capable of any computation that can be done by any modern digital computer, no matter how powerful.

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"It is this feature -- the stability of the 1 and 0 states -- that ensures the success of the digital computer," Landauer says.

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Given sufficient time, such a simple device -- known as a Turing machine -- can perform any computation that a modern digital computer, no matter how powerful, can do.

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For the last 30 years, AI researchers have designed digital computer programs in which information is processed through operations on strings of arbitrary symbols.

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Digital computer models suggested that reading depends on "hypothesis testing" about a text's meaning rather than visual processing of parts of words.

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As the brain takes in new stimuli, various patterns of chaotic activity assume consciousness in the form of thoughts and memories, she contends, rather than emerging from an unconscious storage bin, as in digital computer models of memory and learning.

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Such a machine serves as a convenient mathematical model of computation, performing a sequence of basic operations to accomplish anything that a modern digital computer can.

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In this collection of 11 essays, contributors develop an economic theory and means of applied economics based on the mathematics of the digital computer. The essays, inspired by a workshop on computable economics in Trento in October 2002, include such topics as complexity and information in modeling, the algorithmic and exchangeable aspects of induction, constructive and classical models for results in economics and game theory, the tools and concepts of computable economics, emergence and universal computation, research and development in computable production functions, examining computable knowledge and undecidability with a Turing machine metaphor applied to endogenous growth models, and rights and decentralized computation.

Computability, Complexity and Constructivity in Economic Analysis

World War II provided the impetus for the development of the electronic digital computer, they say, and the Cold War security and defense needs of the US drove the development of computing technology.