Is computation reversible

Abstract Recent studies have suggested that computation is essentially reversible, provided no information is lost. This is a consequence of Landauer’s principle which only requires energy expenditure and entropy increase for information deletion. In this paper we propose to treat information as being intrinsic to points of non-analyticity, so that the movement of information is always associated with the dissipation of heat. This allows us to construct a theory consistent with causality, and the second law of thermodynamics. Since computation requires the movement of information bits through finite volume gates, energy is dissipated even when information is not destroyed, thus indicating that computation is fundamentally non-reversible.

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