The article has links to the 3 good sources (Landauer, Zhirnov, Frank) for this derivation. I don’t have time to analyze your math in detail but I suspect you are starting with the wrong setup—you need a minimal energy well to represent a bit stably against noise at all, and you pay that price for each bit, otherwise it isn’t actually a bit.
My prior that you find an error in the physics lit here is extremely low—this is pretty well established at this point.
I’ve taken a look at Michael P. Frank’s paper and it doesn’t seem like I’ve found an error in the physics lit. Also, I still 100% endorse my comment above: The physics is correct.
So your priors check out, but how can both be true?
you need a minimal energy well to represent a bit stably against noise at all, and you pay that price for each bit, otherwise it isn’t actually a bit.
To use the terminology in Frank, this is Esig you’re talking about. My analysis above applies to Ediss. Now in section 2 of Frank’s paper, he says:
With this particular mechanism, we see that Ediss=Esig; later, we will see that
in other mechanisms, Ediss can be made much less than Esig.
The formula kTlogr shows up in section 2, before Frank moves on to talking about reversible computing. In section 3, he gives adiabatic switching as an example of a case where Ediss can be made much smaller than Esig. (Though other mechanisms are also possible.) About midway through section 4, Frank uses the standard kTlog2 value, since he’s no longer discussing the restricted case where Ediss=Esig.
The article has links to the 3 good sources (Landauer, Zhirnov, Frank) for this derivation. I don’t have time to analyze your math in detail but I suspect you are starting with the wrong setup—you need a minimal energy well to represent a bit stably against noise at all, and you pay that price for each bit, otherwise it isn’t actually a bit.
My prior that you find an error in the physics lit here is extremely low—this is pretty well established at this point.
I’ve taken a look at Michael P. Frank’s paper and it doesn’t seem like I’ve found an error in the physics lit. Also, I still 100% endorse my comment above: The physics is correct.
So your priors check out, but how can both be true?
To use the terminology in Frank, this is Esig you’re talking about. My analysis above applies to Ediss. Now in section 2 of Frank’s paper, he says:
The formula kTlogr shows up in section 2, before Frank moves on to talking about reversible computing. In section 3, he gives adiabatic switching as an example of a case where Ediss can be made much smaller than Esig. (Though other mechanisms are also possible.) About midway through section 4, Frank uses the standard kTlog2 value, since he’s no longer discussing the restricted case where Ediss=Esig.
Adiabatic computing is a form of partial reversible computing.