2025/05/29 by Shimizu, Takase, Chida, Kensaku, Yamahata, Gento +1 · 2 citations
#FOS: Physical sciences #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2505.23087
We measured the energy efficiency of information erasure using silicon DRAM cells capable of counting charges on capacitors at the single-electron level. Our measurements revealed that the efficiency decreased as the erasure error rate decreased, and notably, the Landauer limit was not achieved even under effectively infinite-time operation. By comparing the measured efficiency with the Landauer limit, we identified a thermodynamic constraint that prevents DRAM from reaching this limit: the inability to prepare the initial state in thermal equilibrium, which in turn prohibits quasi-static operations. This finding has broad implications for DRAM cells and for many electronic circuits sharing similar structures. Furthermore, it validates our experimental approach to discovering thermodynamic constraints that impose tighter, practically relevant limits, opening a new research direction in information thermodynamics.