The Morse telegraph. (Image courtesy of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.)
Instructor(s)
Prof. Paul Penfield
Prof. Seth Lloyd
MIT Course Number
6.050J / 2.110J
As Taught In
Spring 2008
Level
Undergraduate
Course Description
Course Features
- Selected video lectures
- Online textbooks
- Assignments: problem sets with solutions
- Assignments: programming (no examples)
Course Description
This course explores the ultimate limits to communication and computation, with an emphasis on the physical nature of information and information processing. Topics include: information and computation, digital signals, codes and compression, applications such as biological representations of information, logic circuits, computer architectures, and algorithmic information, noise, probability, error correction, reversible and irreversible operations, physics of computation, and quantum computation. The concept of entropy applied to channel capacity and to the second law of thermodynamics.