Surprisingly, even old and outdated Xeelee computers such as the Gamma Ray Processor are far superior to Culture Minds when it comes to sheer number crunching and processing power-
They literally operate at the Bekenstien's Bound and are capable of 10^51 operations/second. They are unsurprisingly the most powerful computers designed as per known physics, and to put the number perspective- simulating universes to a reasonable resolution is within the scope of 10^51 FLOP/10^31 memory machine which is orders of magnitude lower than a Gamma Ray Processor. Xeelee is a hard sci-fi where the scale is done right and it shows.
I'm gonna take from Sufficient's post on this-
1. We are in fact given some specs of the Minds, namely we do know that the full memory storage of an Iridian War era Mind was on the order of 10^30 'characters'.
Now, one could consider that a 'character' isn't exactly a precise unit of memory, but assuming for a moment that they are encoded in a way comparable to the modern char-types, this would translate to at most 32 bits of data per character. A value which would allow for 4294967296 unique symbols per a single character and one that would translate to Minds total storage being on the order of 3.2 * 10^31 bits.
A value which would be only slightly larger than the storage space of an 1 kg ICOG gamma ray computer, and one that would imply a vastly less efficient storage technology on that era's Minds, given that their mass was far more than 3.2 kg.
In fact one could make an estimation of the Mind's mass based on the fact that 0.5 % of its mass reacting with an Earth-like planet, in an antimatter like fashion, would have resulted in said planet's destruction.
Going with the binding energy of 10^32 J and using the m = E / c^2 relation one can come into conclusion that Mind's mass would be equal to around 5.5 * 10^16 kg, making it apparently far less efficient at data storage than Coalition's gamma ray computers.
Now, it is true that Minds do transfer data at superluminal velocities, giving them an advantage in the I/O data transfer. That said, this by itself, does not translate into some specific value of computations performed by Mind per second and thus doesn't really tell us anything about Mind's overall computational capabilities.
I guess that one could make some estimations if one was to know the physical size of Minds, and then also use the total number of bits in its memory and the typical, sustainable, speeds of objects achievable with Culture's understanding of hyperspace, but any such estimation would be rather shaky to say the least. For once it would assume that Minds can in fact operate efficiently on all bits making up its memory, or even just a large portion of them, at a given time frame dt.
2. The idea that Minds simulate entire universes loses basically all of its usability, as far as any comparison goes, when one takes into account the fact that we don't have any data on the level of detail, as well as the actual scope, which those simulations do have. You have mentioned here the notion that the Minds were avoiding conditions which could give rise to sentient life in those types of simulations, but this is simply never mentioned in the context of the 'infinite fun space'.
I guess that one could attempt to infer something from the notion that the universes that the Minds were able to simulate were both large and complex enough to predict the existence life, but at the same time you don't need anything close to the 'complete' recreation of a universe in order to answer whenever it could be inhabited by something.
For instance one could image a simulation with varying levels of complexity, from the very 'low resolution' one of the evolution of matter on intergalactic and interstellar scopes, not so different from
RL constructs of this type, to a more detailed one that would model the behaviour of matter on, say, a planet's surface.
Putting this aside, the notion of the simulations gaining consciousness is brought up in a rather different context.
Taking from this rather long fragment a few observations:
- In the majority of the simulations made in the Culture universe, the more complex processes "like public opinion or reactions of alien cultures" are usually modeled not by explicitly recreating the environments in which they occur, such as the alien civilisations in question, but rather by creating analytical models. Those models are also made with the efficiency of computations being taken in account.
With this in mind one could assume that the Minds will also utilize similar methods in the "Infinite fun space", utilising analytical models to depict the more complex properties of their imagined universes.
- The Minds do find sustaining detailed simulations of individual civilisations, of scale characteristic for the Culture's Milky Way galaxy, to be a non-trivial strain on their resources. Otherwise the whole problem of needing to keep them running after the purpose of a given simulation was achieved, and the long-term sustainability of those, wouldn't be present.
If one wants to play with some estimates here, then it is possible to make some observations here. Let's assume here that by civilisation one's means an entity of the scale of non-Mind population of the Culture, that is one with around 5*10^13 individuals.
Assuming that to simulate an average mind of the citizen of this hypothetical civilisation, along with all of its sensory inputs, one would need 10^9 times more operations than conducted in a modern Human mind, that is 10^27 operations per second, then the total computing power needed to simulate all those individuals and their environment, would be on the order of 5 * 10^40 operations per second.
That is a value which is roughly 10 billion times smaller than the estimates of the Gamma ray computer performance. If Minds did have comparable computing capabilities then keeping around tens of millions of simulations like this would be trivial to them. The fact that it isn't indicates them having lower processing capabilities than this.
If you don't want to read all that, then TLDR- Culture Minds are billions of times smaller than the estimates of Gamma Ray Computers, who in turn are near infinitely weaker than a CTC. Closed Timeline Curve Computers stomps Moon Cell, Warrior Entity, Culture Minds, Reading Thoth 78 together with trivial ease. Negative processing time goes brrr....
Both are infinite multiversal computers, so placing them anywhere near Worm, ToAru, Nasuverse is just a stomp thread
The meaning has already been explained but Kamachi takes alot of inspiration from IRL Kaballah and mysticism, names there tend to be
weird- then again, the guy came up with monstrosities like Queen Elizard and Alice Anotherbible.
He's known for many things, a good naming sense was never one of them.
