Universal Laws and Architectures (Part II)

This post is a continuation of a discussion and about a research program to address an essential but (I think) neglected challenge involving “architecture.” If you missed it, be sure to start with Part I, since it provides context for what follows…

Basic layered architectures in theory and practice

If architecture is the most persistent and shared organizational structure of a set of systems and/or a single system over time, then the most fundamental theory of architecture is due to Turing, who first formalized splitting computation into layers of software (SW) running on digital hardware (HW).  (I’m disturbed that Turing has been wildly misread and misinterpreted, but I’ll stick with those parts of his legacy that are clear and consistent within engineering, having to do with computation and complexity.  I’ll avoid Turing tests and morphogenesis for now.)

Universal Laws and Architectures (Part I)

Steven’s previous posts discussing architectural issues in communication and electricity networks (part I, part II) naturally lead to a discussion of architecture more broadly, which has been topic of interest for quite a while at Caltech…

In particular, the motivation for this blog post is to start a discussion and about a research program to address an essential but (I think) neglected challenge involving “architecture.” For me, architecture is the most persistent and shared organizational structure across a set of systems and/or within a single system over time.  But nothing in this subject is clear or resolved.