Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: Modern digital electronics support remarkably reliable computing, especially given the challenge of controlling nanoscale logical components that interact in fluctuating environments.However, we demonstrate that the high-reliability limit is subject to a fundamental error-energy-efficiency tradeoff that arises from time-symmetric control: requiring a low probability of error causes energy consumption to diverge as the logarithm of the inverse error rate for nonreciprocal logical transitions.The reciprocity (self-invertibility) of a computation is a stricter condition for thermodynamic efficiency than logical reversibility (invertibility), the latter being the root of Landauer's work bound on erasing information.Beyond engineered computation, the results identify a generic error-dissipation tradeoff in steady-state transformations of genetic information carried out by biological organisms.The lesson is that computational dissipation under time-symmetric control cannot reach, and is often far above, the Landauer limit.In this way, time-asymmetry becomes a design principle for thermodynamically efficient computing.
Source: Physical Review Research
Authors: Paul M. Riechers, Alexander B. Boyd, Gregory W. Wimsatt, James P. Crutchfield
Language: English
Subfield: Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,625
OpenAlex ID: W3033874543