About the meaning of the phrase '''At one end of the continuum' [closed]

Solution 1:

continuum, countable noun
A continuum is a set of things on a scale, which have a particular characteristic to different degrees.

These various complaints are part of a continuum of ill-health.

It is at one end of the cost continuum.

^{https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/continuum}

Your text is discussing the notion of computation. The set of things that define what may be considered a computation is the continuum being discussed here.

One end of the continuum defines computation very strictly: it's a computer performing an operation (maybe; just an example).

The other end of the continuum (as appears in your text) defines a computation very loosely: any operation that translates data in any manner (maybe; also just an example).

Solution 2:

Continuum

a coherent whole characterized as a collection, sequence, or progression of values or elements varying by minute degrees

Many individuals fall in different places in a continuum. If we were discussing musical ability, I might place Dame Joan Sutherland at the one end of the continuum, and perhaps my tone-deaf fellow churchgoer at the other end. (It is not a technical term, but used in many walks of life.)

The author is presenting different approaches to computing, starting from the most simple (such as a Turing machine). In the author's view, the Turing machine has very little "empircal bite" (meaning, it could implement plenty of algorithms, but would be mind-numbingly difficult to implement and even more so to verify. Imagine trying to find the prime factors of a large number using a Turing machine.)

RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computers) would be somewhere in the middle of this scale. You can do a lot more, empircally, than you could do with a Turing Machine. You could write a prime factorization program in a few dozen lines using a modern compiler.

Quantum computing would represent the other end of this computing continuum. It has a huge "empirical bite" and is at the cutting edge of "computationalism." Prime factorization? That's one of the test cases for Quantum computing.