The idea of creating computers out of virtual objects has always fascinated me since I first saw someone do it in Minecraft.

It really brings up some interesting scenarios that I like to day dream about sometimes.

For instance, in a real world simulation, you could build a processor with a gazillion transistors because you don’t have to worry about the same physical limitations like size or heat. Could it take an input and compute an output faster than something in the real world?

Would you be bound by the speed of light in the virtual world? You control the physics in your virtual world, so technically nothing prevents it right? Information can travel faster than the speed of light relative to your virtual objects. Say you model the earth at 1:1 scale in the simulation and have avatars on complete opposite sides of earth. They could exchange messages faster than they could in the real world since the information wouldn’t have to physically travel across physical space. (e.g. send message directly to memory address X instead of sending light through fiber optic physics simulator).

Essentially, in a simulation of the physical world that has tweaked physics, could information be processed faster than the processor running the simulation?

Is there some sort of conservation of energy law, but for information?