Thermodynamic cost of reversible computing

Reversible computing requires preservation of all information throughout the entire computational process; this implies that all errors that appear as a result of the interaction of the information-carrying system with uncontrolled degrees of freedom must be corrected. But this can only be done at t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysical review letters Vol. 99; no. 11; p. 110502
Main Authors Levitin, Lev B, Toffoli, Tommaso
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 14.09.2007
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Summary:Reversible computing requires preservation of all information throughout the entire computational process; this implies that all errors that appear as a result of the interaction of the information-carrying system with uncontrolled degrees of freedom must be corrected. But this can only be done at the expense of an increase in the entropy of the environment corresponding to the dissipation, in the form of heat, of the "noisy" part of the system's energy. This Letter gives an expression of that energy in terms of the effective noise temperature, and analyzes the relationship between the energy dissipation rate and the rate of computation. Finally, a generalized Clausius principle based on the concept of effective temperature is presented.
ISSN:0031-9007
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.110502