On 9/20/2013 10:38 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 6:10 PM, LizR <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:>> As Rolf Landauer said "Computation is physical", all computations must use energy and generate heat. And what's the difference between a physical process and a non-physical process anyway? > I thought it was only erasing the results of computations that had to use energy and increase entropy? - if so - quibbling, I know, but sometimes quibbles have important consequences.A computation always takes a nonzero amount of energy to perform, theoretically you can make the energy used be as close to zero as you like, but the less energy you use the slower the calculation.
That's in the limit of erasing registers isentropically. But if you don't erase at all, you keep the calculation reversible, there's no necessary loss.
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