I.e. we can talk about Turing machines with infinite tapes without actually making one with an infinite tape.
I.e. we can talk about Turing machines with infinite tapes without actually making one with an infinite tape.
So we can construct approximations of it in the sense that we can create computers with varying, finite amounts of RAM. This might seem like a pedantic/obvious point to make, but it is actually also possible to design abstract computational machines that operate on truly infinite quantities, like a machine that has random access to an infinite, uncomputable sequence.
From a simplicity perspective, it also makes more sense to consider machines with an arbitrarily large amount of RAM (you can always hotplug more RAM), compared to setting some arbitrary limit because that is the most RAM we happen to be able to achieve in this universe.
I.e. a (cryptographic) random number generator?