In computer science, a universal Turing machine (UTM) is a Turing machine that can simulate an arbitrary Turing machine on arbitrary input. The universal machine essentially achieves this by reading both the description of the machine to be simulated as well as the input thereof from its own tape. Alan Turing introduced this machine in 1936–1937. This model is considered by some (for example, Martin Davis (2000)) to be the origin of the stored program computer—used by John von Neumann (1946) for the "Electronic Computing Instrument" that now bears von Neumann's name: the von Neumann architecture. It is also known as universal computing machine, universal machine (UM), machine U, U.
In terms of computational complexity, a multi-tape universal Turing machine need only be slower by logarithmic factor compared to the machines it simulates.
Read more about Universal Turing Machine: Introduction, Stored-program Computer, Mathematical Theory, Efficiency, Smallest Machines, Example of Universal-machine Coding
Famous quotes containing the words universal and/or machine:
“The universal soul is the alone creator of the useful and the beautiful; therefore to make anything useful or beautiful, the individual must be submitted to the universal mind.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The cycle of the machine is now coming to an end. Man has learned much in the hard discipline and the shrewd, unflinching grasp of practical possibilities that the machine has provided in the last three centuries: but we can no more continue to live in the world of the machine than we could live successfully on the barren surface of the moon.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)