Non-Standard Computation: Molecular Computation - Cellular Automata - Evolutionary Algorithms - Quantum Computers

In recent years, a discussion of fundamentally new computer concepts has been stirred up by new developments in various scientific areas. Even in the newspapers one could find articles containing evocative terms like ´Quantum Computers´ or ´Molecular Computers´. The background is the need for better performing computers in applications which require an extremely high parallelism or a special behaviour such as the simulation of quantum systems. Examples include the design of a turbine with about 100 parts, a realistic simulation of for instance only 40 electrons in a solid, and the search for the shortest telephone line that connects 100 cities scattered over a country. These require calculations that is far beyond the power of conventional computers! This exciting book provides the first overview of and introduction to the chemical, biological and physical non-standard computation concepts which promise to solve these problems by a massive parallelism and a clever use of other effects: Molecular and Quantum Computers, and Genetic Algorithms. Written on a scientific level, it is an up-to-date information source for scientists and graduate students working in the field in physics, chemistry, computer and life sciences as well as interested readers with a scientific background.