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@article{Ouldridge:2024,
author = {Ouldridge, T},
journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA},
title = {Is stochastic thermodynamics the key to understanding the energy costs of computation},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/115166},
year = {2024}
}
TY - JOUR
AB - The relationship between the thermodynamic and computational characteristics of dynamical physical systems has been a major theoreticalinterest since at least the 19th century, and has been of increasing practical importance as the energetic cost of digital devices has explodedover the last half century. One of the most important thermodynamic features of real-world computers is that they operate very far fromthermal equilibrium, in finite time, with many quickly (co-)evolving degrees of freedom. Such computers also must almost always obey multiplephysical constraints on how they work. For example, all modern digital computers are periodic processes, governed by a global clock. Anotherexample is that many computers are modular, hierarchical systems, with strong restrictions on the connectivity of their subsystems. Thisproperties hold both for naturally occurring computers, like brains or Eukaryotic cells, as well as digital systems. These features of real-worldcomputers are absent in 20th century analyses of the thermodynamics of computational processes, which focused on quasi-statically slowprocesses. However, the field of stochastic thermodynamics has been developed in the last few decades — and it provides the formal tools foranalyzing systems that have exactly these features of real-world computers. We argue here that these tools, together with other tools currentlybeing developed in stochastic thermodynamics, may help us understand at a far deeper level just how the fundamental physical properties ofdynamic systems are related to the computation that they perform.
AU - Ouldridge,T
PY - 2024///
SN - 0027-8424
TI - Is stochastic thermodynamics the key to understanding the energy costs of computation
T2 - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/115166
ER -
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