Landauer's principle
E87719
Landauer's principle is a foundational concept in thermodynamics and information theory stating that erasing one bit of information in a computational process necessarily dissipates a minimum amount of heat, linking information processing to physical entropy.
Statements (46)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
information-theoretic principle
→
physical principle → thermodynamic principle → |
| appliesTo |
bit erasure
→
logically irreversible computation → overwriting of memory → reset-to-zero operation → |
| concerns |
energy cost of information processing
→
entropy production in information erasure → thermodynamic cost of computation → |
| coreClaim |
erasure of one bit of information has a minimum thermodynamic cost
→
information is physical → logically irreversible operations are necessarily accompanied by heat dissipation → |
| dependsOn |
Boltzmann constant
→
absolute temperature → |
| field |
computational physics
→
information theory → reversible computing → statistical mechanics → thermodynamics → |
| hasConsequence |
links logical irreversibility to physical irreversibility
→
sets lower bound on energy per logical operation involving erasure → |
| hasFormula |
Q ≥ kT ln 2 per erased bit
→
|
| implies |
no computation can be completely dissipationless if it includes erasure
→
reversible computation can in principle avoid Landauer heat for logical operations → |
| minimumEntropyIncreasePerBit |
k ln 2
→
|
| minimumHeatPerBit |
kT ln 2
→
|
| motivated |
development of low-power computing limits
→
research in thermodynamics of computation → |
| namedAfter |
Rolf Landauer
→
|
| publicationYear |
1961
→
|
| publishedIn |
IBM Journal of Research and Development
→
|
| relatedTo |
Bennett's logical reversibility
→
Boltzmann entropy → Shannon entropy → reversible computing → second law of thermodynamics → |
| relatesQuantity |
heat dissipation
→
information entropy → thermodynamic entropy → |
| statedBy |
Rolf Landauer
→
|
| status |
widely accepted in physics and information theory
→
|
| supports |
physical limits of computation
→
|
| temperatureDependence |
minimum heat cost is proportional to absolute temperature
→
|
| usedInArgument |
Maxwell's demon resolution
→
Szilard engine analysis → |
Referenced by (3)
| Subject (surface form when different) | Predicate |
|---|---|
|
Rolf Landauer
→
|
knownFor |
|
Maxwell's demon thought experiment
→
|
relatedConcept |
|
Rolf Landauer
→
|
theoryFormulated |