The Energetics of Computing in Life and Machines
The Energetics of Computing in Life and Machines
Why do computers use so much energy? What are the fundamental physical laws governing the relationship between the precise computation run by a system, whether artificial or natural, and how much energy that computation requires? Can we learn how to improve efficiency in computing by examining how biological computers manage to be so efficient? The time is ripe for a new synthesis of nonequilibrium physics, computer science, and biochemistry.
This volume integrates pure and applied concepts from these diverse fields, with the goal of cultivating a modern, nonequilibrium thermodynamics of computation.
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Editors
Peter F. Stadler
Joshua A. Grochow
Table of Contents
Preface, Chris Kempes, David H. Wolpert, Peter F. Stadler, and Joshua A. Grochow
1: Overview of Information Theory, Computer Science Theory, and Stochastic Thermodynamics of Computation, David H. Wolpert
2: A Compositional Chemical Architecture for Asynchronous Computation, Blake S. Pollard
3: Information Processing in Chemical Systems, Jakob L. Andersen, Christoph Flamm, Daniel Merkle, and Peter F. Stadler
4: Native Chemical Automata and the Thermodynamic Interpretation of Their Experimental Accept/Reject Responses, Marta Dueñas-Díez and Juan Pérez-Mercader
5: Intergenerational Cellular Signal Transfer and Erasure, GW C. McElfresh and J. Christian J. Ray
6: Protocell Cycles as Thermodynamic Cycles, Bernat Corominas-Murtra, Harold Fellermann, and Ricard Solé
7: How and What Does a Biological System Compute? Sonja J. Prohaska, Peter F. Stadler, and Manfred Laubichler
8: Toward Space- and Energy-Efficient Computations, Anne Condon and Chris Thachuk
9: Beyond Number of Bit Erasures: Computer Science Theory of the Thermodynamics of Computation, Joshua A. Grochow and David H. Wolpert
10: Automatically Reducing Energy Consumption of Software, Jeremy Lacomis, Jonathan Dorn, Westley Weimer, and Stephanie Forrest
11: Trade-Offs between Cost and Precision and Their Possible Impact on Aging, Hildegard Meyer-Ortmanns
12: The Power of Being Explicit: Demystifying Work, Heat, and Free Energy in the Physics of Computation, Thomas E. Ouldridge, Rory A. Brittain, and Pieter Rein ten Wolde
13: Transforming Metastable Memories: The Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics of Computation, Paul M. Riechers
14: Physical Limitations of Work Extraction from Temporal Correlations, Elan Stopnitzky, Susanne Still, Thomas E. Ouldridge, and Lee Altenberg
15: Detailed Fluctuation Theorems: A Unifying Perspective, Riccardo Rao and Massimiliano Esposito
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