Turing Machine

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Turing Completeness

A device that can simulate any Turing Machine is called Turing complete. The device does not necessarily have to be intentionally designed to compute or be a computer; if a device, piece of software or even an abstract concept meets the criteria it is Turing complete.

Even software that is only used as a teaching tool or exist only as a concept, not as an implementation (such as Donald Knuth's MMIX[1] can be considered "Turing complete," in a completely abstract sense.

The name "Turing machine" and the concept known as "Turing completeness" are both derived from noted mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing.

References

  1. Donald Knuth. Knuth: MMIX. Retrieved on 2007-11-10.