Prebiotic Geochemical Automata at the Intersection of Radiolytic Chemistry, Physical Complexity, and Systems Biology
Table 1
Hierarchically compounded components and instruction levels recognizable in most modern computers, with object levels and characteristic time scales of operation in seconds. Adapted from Brown et al. [47] and Denning [48].
Level
Name
Objects (characteristic time scale)
15
Workflow process
Cross-platform instructions and applications (105)
14
User interface
Machine operating systems (103)
13
User virtual machine
User machine displays (101)
12
Directories
Directories (10−1)
11
I/O streams
Input/output data (10−2)
10
Devices
External devices (10−2)
9
File system
Files (10−2)
8
Interprocess communication
Pipes (10−2)
7
Virtual memory
Memory segments (10−2)
6
Local secondary storage
Blocks of data (10−3)
5
Processes and semaphores
Primitive processes, semaphores, ready list (10−4)