3 ms·
A short summary as I understand: Imagine you write a '1' bit to a memory location - now you know for sure that the location contains '1' now, as you can check
by szemet 9y ago
A short summary as I understand:
Imagine you write a '1' bit to a memory location - now you know for sure that the location contains '1' now, as you can check it anytime. But now you have absolutely no information about the past, either it was '1' before or '0'. So the number of legal states (and entropy) seemingly have decreased if you are considering this bit level macrostate. But according to the 2nd law the global entropy never decreases, so at least an equal entropy increase eventually should be there somewhere in the system (in the microstates - the states you did not considered as logically separate) - for example as a small heat increase.
- oelmekki 9y agoI see. So, the point made was not so much that the "demon" has to go through complete flush of memory than its arbitration causes small energy waste on its own which compensates for the perceived diminution of entropy in the manipulated system. This allows me to proceed, thanks!
- evincarofautumn 9y agoThis is also why reversible computing is interesting, because (at least theoretically) you can do computation with minimal energy expenditure & wasted heat if your operations are all physically reversible.