Are there quantum bounds on the recyclability of clock signals in low power computers?

Abstract

Even if a logical network consists of thermodynamically reversible gate operations, the computation process may have high dissipation rate if the gate implementation is controlled by external clock signals. It is an open question whether the global clocking mechanism necessarily envolves irreversible processes. However, one can show that it is not possible to extract any timing information from a micro-physical clock without disturbing it. Applying recent results of quantum information theory we can show a hardware-independent lower bound on the timing information that is necessarily destroyed if one tries to copy the signal. The bound becomes tighter for low energy signals, i.e., the timing information gets more and more quantum.

arXiv comment5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (1)

• What is Possible Without Disturbing Partially Known Quantum States?

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Catalytic Coherence
• On the Computational Power of Molecular Heat Engines
• Synchronizing quantum clocks with classical one-way communication: Bounds on the generated entropy
• A Quantum Broadcasting Problem in Classical Low Power Signal Processing
• Bounds on the entropy generated when timing information is extracted from microscopic systems
• Does universal controllability of physical systems prohibit thermodynamic cycles?
• How much is a quantum controller controlled by the controlled system?