This post is definitely towards the theoretical side of the theory-engineering spectrum. So the question it tries to answer is much more “does the fact that the laws of physics are reversible rule this out?” rather than “can we actually build something that does this?”. It’s sounding to me like lowish cost reliable erasure is not in principle ruled out by reversible physics (eg. this paper gives kTlog2+c/t where t is the time required and c is some constant), and so the engineering questions are what will be decisive. Hopefully reversible computing will be luckier than nuclear fusion power in terms of the engineering obstacles it runs into.
I don’t have too much else to add right now, I’ll have to take your advice of looking through the literature and seeing what’s out there.
Hi Dr. Frank, thanks for weighing in.
This post is definitely towards the theoretical side of the theory-engineering spectrum. So the question it tries to answer is much more “does the fact that the laws of physics are reversible rule this out?” rather than “can we actually build something that does this?”. It’s sounding to me like lowish cost reliable erasure is not in principle ruled out by reversible physics (eg. this paper gives kTlog2+c/t where t is the time required and c is some constant), and so the engineering questions are what will be decisive. Hopefully reversible computing will be luckier than nuclear fusion power in terms of the engineering obstacles it runs into.
I don’t have too much else to add right now, I’ll have to take your advice of looking through the literature and seeing what’s out there.