Hans @-@ Joachim Bremermann , a professor of mathematics and biophysics at the University of California at Berkeley , further argued in a 1965 paper that the " speed , memory , and processing capacity of any possible future computer equipment are limited by certain physical barriers : the light barrier , the quantum barrier , and the thermodynamical barrier . These limitations imply , for example , that no computer , however constructed , will ever be able to examine the entire tree of possible move sequences of the game of chess . " Nonetheless , Bremermann did not foreclose the possibility that a computer would someday be able to solve chess . He wrote , " In order to have a computer play a perfect or nearly perfect game [ of chess ] it will be necessary either to analyze the game completely ... or to analyze the game in an approximate way and combine this with a limited amount of tree searching . ... A theoretical understanding of such heuristic programming , however , is still very much wanting . "