Irreversibility and Heat Generation in the Computing Process.

Landauer, R. (1961). Irreversibility and Heat Generation in the Computing Process. IBM Journal of Research and Development, 5(3), 183-191.

Type

Journal article

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

1961

Volume

5

Issue

3

Pages

183-191

DOI

10.1147/rd.53.0183

DOI registrant

IBM

Link

https://doi.org/10.1147/rd.53.0183

Cited from

mathematics, physics

Cited by

6 citations across 6 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Bijectivity
  • The transfers are substantive and well-documented, because the no-collisions-no-gaps structure and its consequences are the same wherever two collections are matched. Bijective demonstration into cross-domain counting: the insight that two counts are equal because the things they count can be paired transfers as a general move — when two quantities are equal, look for the bijection that explains it — and the presence or absence of such an explanatory pairing often decides whether an equality is a coincidence or a structural identity. Reversible operation into energy efficiency: the theoretical insight that bijective operations need not dissipate information, and hence need not dissipate energy, drives reversible-computing architectures, where the bijectivity constraint becomes a thermodynamic constraint — a transfer of a set-theoretic property into physics.
• Dissipation
  • The defining feature is that energy is not destroyed — conservation holds rigorously — but rendered unavailable for further useful work in the same form, with the entropic record of the conversion preserved in the surroundings, an asymmetry that Landauer (1961) extended from heat engines to information processing by showing that erasing a single bit of information necessarily dissipates at least kT ln 2 of energy into the thermal bath.

    This sourceEstablishes Landauer's principle: erasure of one bit of information dissipates at least k_B T ln 2 of heat; links information deletion to thermodynamic irreversibility; foundation for understanding information-theoretic limits in computation.

• Entropy (Thermodynamic Sense)
  • Szilard (1929) located the compensating cost in the demon's measurement; the accepted resolution came later, when Landauer (1961)

    This sourceEstablishes Landauer's principle: erasure of one bit of information dissipates at least k_B T ln 2 of heat; links information deletion to thermodynamic irreversibility.

• Irreversibility
  • . Information theory and computation Landauer's principle

    This sourceEstablishes Landauer's principle: erasure of one bit of information dissipates at least k_B T ln 2 of heat; links information deletion to thermodynamic irreversibility; foundation for understanding information-theoretic limits in computation.

• Second Law of Thermodynamics
  • Not a statement about information without qualification: while Landauer's principle

    This sourceEstablishes Landauer's principle: erasure of one bit of information dissipates at least k_B T ln 2 of heat; links information deletion to thermodynamic irreversibility; foundation for understanding information-theoretic limits in computation.

Domain-specific

• Fredkin gate
  • The entry records a descriptive analytical identity; practical use requires the governing domain's evidence, standards, and safety obligations.

Verification

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