Thermodynamics of computing with circuits

Abstract

Digital computers implement computations using circuits, as do many naturally occurring systems (e.g., gene regulatory networks). The topology of any such circuit restricts which variables may be physically coupled during the operation of a circuit. We investigate how such restrictions on the physical coupling affects the thermodynamic costs of running the circuit. To do this we first calculate the minimal additional entropy production that arises when we run a given gate in a circuit. We then build on this calculation, to analyze how the thermodynamic costs of implementing a computation with a full circuit, comprising multiple connected gates, depends on the topology of that circuit. This analysis provides a rich new set of optimization problems that must be addressed by any designer of a circuit, if they wish to minimize thermodynamic costs.

26 pages (6 of appendices), 5 figures

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Cited by in corpus (12)

• Stochastic Thermodynamics of Non-Linear Electronic Circuits: A Realistic Framework for Computing around kT
• Thermodynamic costs of Turing Machines
• Initial-State Dependence of Thermodynamic Dissipation for any Quantum Process
• Principles of Low Dissipation Computing from a Stochastic Circuit Model
• Uncertainty relations and fluctuation theorems for Bayes nets
• Dependence of integrated, instantaneous, and fluctuating entropy production on the initial state in quantum and classical processes
• Stochastic thermodynamic bounds on logical circuit operation
• Fate of Duplicated Neural Structures
• Nonequilibrium thermodynamics of uncertain stochastic processes
• Entropy production given constraints on the energy functions
• Generalized Zurek's bound on the cost of an individual classical or quantum computation
• Work, entropy production, and thermodynamics of information under protocol constraints