Turing Machine

A Turing Machine is known in the computing field as a machine that qualifies as a computer under a specific set of conditions. Devices can be considered "Turing complete" if they fill these criteria.

The device does not necessarily have to be intentionally designed to compute or be a computer; if a device, piece of software or even an abstract concept meets the criteria it is considered a Turing machine.

Even software that is only used as a teaching tool or exist only as a concept, not as an implementation (such as Donald Knuth's MMIX can be considered "Turing complete," in a completely abstract sense.

The name "Turing machine" and the concept known as "Turing completeness" are both derived from noted mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing.