English

On the Universality of Memcomputing Machines

Neural and Evolutionary Computing 2019-05-29 v2 Emerging Technologies

Abstract

Universal memcomputing machines (UMMs) [IEEE Trans. Neural Netw. Learn. Syst. 26, 2702 (2015)] represent a novel computational model in which memory (time non-locality) accomplishes both tasks of storing and processing of information. UMMs have been shown to be Turing-complete, namely they can simulate any Turing machine. In this paper, using set theory and cardinality arguments, we compare them with liquid-state machines (or "reservoir computing") and quantum machines ("quantum computing"). We show that UMMs can simulate both types of machines, hence they are both "liquid-" or "reservoir-complete" and "quantum-complete". Of course, these statements pertain only to the type of problems these machines can solve, and not to the amount of resources required for such simulations. Nonetheless, the method presented here provides a general framework in which to describe the relation between UMMs and any other type of computational model.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1712.08702,
  title  = {On the Universality of Memcomputing Machines},
  author = {Yan Ru Pei and Fabio L. Traversa and Massimiliano Di Ventra},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1712.08702},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

10 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T23:27:58.168Z