Firstly, it is thermodynamically possible to run error free computations very close to the thermodynamic limits. This just requires the energy used to represent a bit to be significantly larger than the energy dissipated as waste heat when a bit is deleted.
In theory it’s possible to perform computation without erasing bits—ie reversible computation, as mentioned in the article. And sure you can use more than necessary to represent a bit, but not much point in that, when you could instead use the minimum Landauer bound amount.
In theory it’s possible to perform computation without erasing bits—ie reversible computation, as mentioned in the article. And sure you can use more than necessary to represent a bit, but not much point in that, when you could instead use the minimum Landauer bound amount.