On 9/20/2013 10:38 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 6:10 PM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com
<mailto:lizj...@gmail.com>> 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.
Brent
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