# The thermodynamics of quasi-deterministic digital computers

Chu, Dominique (2018) The thermodynamics of quasi-deterministic digital computers. Physical Review E: Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics, 97 (2). ISSN 1063-651X. (doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.97.022121)

PDF (Arxiv preprint/version accepted by journal) - Author's Accepted Manuscript
 Preview
Official URL
http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.97.022121

## Abstract

It is now well established that there is no lower bound for the energy dissipated during a computation. The relevance of the zero-energy limit is unclear, however, because it entails computations that are unreliable or infinitely slow, or both. In contrast the thermodynamic costs of deterministic computations that complete in finite time is less well understood. We propose a model of universal computation based on Markovian stochastic processes. While strictly deterministic computation is not possible in such systems, we show that the scaling of the energy consumption in relation to the accuracy of the computation is benign. This enables quasi-deterministic computation at modest cost in energy and completing within finite time.

Item Type: Article 10.1103/PhysRevE.97.022121 energy usage of computation, stochastic thermodynamics of computation, minimal computer Q Science Faculties > Sciences > School of Computing > Computational Intelligence Group Dominique Chu 07 Feb 2018 06:38 UTC 09 Jul 2019 09:07 UTC https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/65961 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes) https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3706-2905