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Actually, I suspect the Eschaton that Charlie Stross writes about is probably more powerful that a Culture Mind as it appears to use time travel for computational purposes:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/09/books-i-...

Of course, proving that the Eschaton is more powerful than a Culture Mind (or one of Vinge's Transcendent Powers) might be a bit tricky.



See also Scott Aaronson, Quantum Computing Since Democritus, or the lectures on which it's based[1], or his paper, "Closed Timelike Curves Make Quantum and Classical Computing Equivalent".[2]

[1] http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec19.html, Lecture 19: Time Travel.

[2] http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/ctc.pdf


In Consider Phlebas, the refugee Mind that was hiding in the tunnel system was described as existing mostly in hyperspace [1]. Whether that beats time travel as a computational shortcut I really wouldn't know.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_(The_Culture)#Structure




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