Thermodynamic Cost of Reversible Computing

Since reversible computing requires preservation of all information throughout the entire computational process, it implies that all the errors that appear as a result of the interaction of the information-carrying system with uncontrolled degrees of freedom must be corrected. This can only be done at the expense of an increase in the entropy of the environment corresponding to the dissipation of the "noisy" part of the energy of the system in the form of heat. This paper gives an expression of that energy in terms of the effective noise temperature, and calculates the relationship between the energy dissipation rate and the rate of computation.