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Thermodynamics of Computation

A cost/speed/reliability tradeoff to erasing

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reference groups
Computer Science Theory
General Non-equilibrium Statistical Physics
Stochastic Thermodynamics
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authors
Manoj Gopalkrishnan
title
A cost/speed/reliability tradeoff to erasing
type
conference_proceedings
year
2015
pages
192-201
volume
9252
publisher
Springer Verlag
abstract
We present a KL-control treatment of the fundamental problem of erasing a bit. We introduce notions of "reliability" of information storage via a reliability timescale $\tau_r$, and "speed" of erasing via an erasing timescale $\tau_e$. Our problem formulation captures the tradeoff between speed, reliability, and the Kullback-Leibler (KL) cost required to erase a bit. We show that rapid erasing of a reliable bit costs at least [math]\displaystyle{ \log 2 - \log\left(1 - \operatorname{e}^{-\frac{\tau_e}{\tau_r}}\right) \gt \log 2 }[/math], which goes to [math]\displaystyle{ \frac{1}{2} \log\frac{2\tau_r}{\tau_e} }[/math] when [math]\displaystyle{ \tau_r\gt \gt \tau_e }[/math].


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