Computationonly

Computationonly is a term used in computer science to describe systems, models, or workloads that are focused exclusively on performing computation, with input/output, data acquisition, or external state changes treated as outside the core model. The phrase implies a restriction to algorithmic processing, where the primary concern is the number of computational steps or the arithmetic costs, rather than memory hierarchy, I/O latency, or network communication.

In theoretical usage, computationonly denotes an abstract model of computation where the complexity of an algorithm is analyzed without explicit reference to hardware or data movement. It is often tied to notions such as time complexity and operation counts, abstracting away from factors like cache misses or disk access.

In practical contexts, computation-only can describe components or workloads that emphasize calculation with minimal reliance on external data streams. Hardware accelerators or cryptographic engines may be described as computation-only insofar as they perform arithmetic operations and return results, with external interfaces designed to be separate from the core computation. In software engineering, computation-only tasks may include offline batch processing, simulations, or data analysis pipelines where inputs are fixed or provided at the start and do not require interactive I/O during processing.

Limitations include the risk of over abstraction: real systems incur costs for memory access, I/O, and synchronization that a purely computation-only model may neglect. The term is not a formal category in most standards, but is used informally to signal a focus on computational aspects.

See also: computation, algorithm, complexity theory, model of computation, batch processing, cryptographic accelerator.