Meaning of Landauer limit | Babel Free

Definitions

A theoretical lower limit on the energy consumption of a computation, derived from Landauer's principle.

Examples

“2012, Rolf Drechsler, Robert Wille, Reversible Circuits: Recent Accomplishments and Future Challenges for an Emerging Technology, Hafizur Rahaman, Sanatan Chattopadhyay, Santanu Chattopadhyay (editors), Progress⟳ in VLSI Design⟳ and Test⟳: 16th International Symposium, Proceedings, Springer, LNCS 7373, page 385, The figure⟳ shows that today's technology is still a factor of 1,000 away from the Landauer limit⟳ and that the expected CMOS development will reduce⟳ this to a factor of 100 within the next 10 years.”

“This Landauer limit⟳ is simply an energy, given in equation form⟳ as kTln2 . The quantity k is a constant of nature called Boltzmann's constant. The T is the environmental temperature in Kelvin, and ln2 is the natural logarithm of two.”

“Using such gates, we can (at least in theory) build⟳ a computer that can compute all bijective functions with no theoretical minimum energy use⟳. There will be some energy use⟳ (nothing is free), but it can, in theory, be much smaller than the Landauer limit⟳. Single reversible gates that can operate⟳ using less power than the Landauer limit⟳ have⟳ been constructed, but no complex circuitry has yet been constructed from these gates.”

CEFR level