# A cost/speed/reliability tradeoff to erasing

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reference groups
Computer Science Theory
General Non-equilibrium Statistical Physics
Stochastic Thermodynamics
author-supplied keywords
keywords
authors
Manoj Gopalkrishnan
title
A cost/speed/reliability tradeoff to erasing
type
conference_proceedings
year
2015
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 $\log 2 - \log\left(1 - \operatorname{e}^{-\frac{\tau_e}{\tau_r ## Counts Citation count Page views 12 ## Identifiers • doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-21819-9_14 (Google search) • issn: 16113349 • sgr: 84943625259 • isbn: 9783319218182 • scopus: 2-s2.0-84943625259 • pui: 606383559\right) > \log 2$, which goes to $\frac{1}{2} \log\frac{2\tau_r}{\tau_e}$ when $\tau_r>>\tau_e$.

|Mendeley link=http://www.mendeley.com/research/costspeedreliability-tradeoff-erasing |pages=192-201 |volume=9252 |publisher=Springer Verlag }}