The thermodynamics of computation—a review

1982/12/01 by Charles H. Bennett · 2,020 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Algorithm #Classical mechanics #Computation #Computer science #Dissipation #Equipartition theorem #Noise (video) #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum mechanics #Ratchet #Semiclassical physics #Statistical physics #Trajectory #Work (physics)

paper · doi:10.1007/bf02084158

published in International Journal of Theoretical Physics 21(12), 905-940 (Springer Science+Business Media)

openalex publication_date 1982/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06

Cited by

• Temperature as joules per bit
• Quantum mechanical computers
• Mechanical Computing Systems Using Only Links and Rotary Joints
• Energetic costs of cellular computation
• Information is Physical
• Thermodynamics of stochastic Turing machines
• Quantum theory cannot consistently describe the use of itself
• Autonomous quantum processing unit: an autonomous thermal computing machine & its physical limitations
• Learning to erase quantum states: thermodynamic implications of quantum learning theory
• Fundamental limits for thermodynamic control with quantum feedback
• Intelligence as high-dimensional coherence: The observable dimensionality bound and computational tractability
• Landauer's Principle as a Criterion for Thermodynamic Consistency in Generalized Black Hole Entropies
• The unitary dynamical state-locking process, the HSSS quantum search process, and the quantum-computing speedup theory
• Speedups in nonequilibrium thermal relaxation: Mpemba and related effects
• Current fluctuations in open quantum systems: Bridging the gap between quantum continuous measurements and full counting statistics
• Spacetime Dynamics and Local Entropy Balance on Causal Horizons
• Impact of Information on Quantum Heat Engines
• A no-go theorem for irreversibility along single-branch collapse dynamics
• Exclusive Control of Quantum Memory Erasure
• Quantum computing
• Information Efficiency of Scientific Automation
• An Algorithmic Information Theory approach to the emergence of order using simple replication models
• The Turing machine of a harmonic oscillator: from the code to the dynamic system
• Correlation-Powered Work: Equivalence in Peak Yield, Differences in Robustness
• The Demon Hidden Behind Life's Ultra-Energy-Efficient Information Processing -- Demonstrated by Biological Molecular Motors
• The Hot Bit I: The Szilard-Landauer Correspondence
• Emerging Research Landscape of Altermagnetism
• Compact RNA sensors for increasingly complex functions of multiple inputs
• Experimental nonequilibrium memory erasure beyond Landauer's bound
• Thermodynamic Limits of Physical Intelligence
• Information heat engine: converting information to energy by feedback control
• Current Fluctuations in Open Quantum Systems: Bridging the Gap Between Quantum Continuous Measurements and Full Counting Statistics
• Thermodynamic Measure of Intelligence
• In-vivo entropy production of A. subaru
• Harnessing higher-dimensional fluctuations in an information engine
• Information dynamics and the arrow of time
• Algorithmic Temperature Induced by Adopted Regular Universal Turing Machine
• Illusory cracks in the second law of thermodynamics in quantum nanoelectronics
• Thermodynamic Computing
• Near-Optimal Simultaneous Estimation of Quantum State Moments
• Fundamental constraints to the logic of living systems
• Coordination Requires Simplification: Thermodynamic Bounds on Multi-Objective Compromise in Natural and Artificial Intelligence
• Quantum vs Classical Erasure: Equal Bounds but Unequal Costs
• When trajectory-based bounds fail: information thermodynamics under noisy feedback
• Realizable Circuit Complexity: Embedding Computation in Space-Time
• Difficulties in the Implementation of Quantum Computers
• Similarity as Thermodynamic Work: Between Depth and Diversity -- from Information Distance to Ugly Duckling
• Improving the efficiency of finite-time memory erasure with potential barrier shaping
• Complexity analysis for algorithmically simple strings
• Learning with springs and sticks
• Performance limits and trade-offs in entropy-driven biochemical computers
• Noise-based communication and computing
• Information and Entropy in Quantum Theory
• Altermagnetic spintronics
• A Dynamical Quantum Daemon
• Back to Bits: Extending Shannon's communication performance framework to computing
• A noninvasive and nonadiabatic quantum Maxwell demon
• Coarse-Grained Quantum Thermodynamics: Observation-Dependent Quantities, Observation-Independent Laws
• Thermodynamics as a theory of decision-making with information processing costs
• Rate distortion coevolutionary dynamics and the flow nature of cognitive epigenetic systems
• Heat as a Witness of Quantum Properties
• Revisiting thermodynamics in computation and information theory
• Engines of Parsimony: Part I; Limits on Computational Rates in Physical\n Systems
• Maxwell's demon and information channel width of a black hole
• The Significance of Information in Quantum Theory
• Revisiting weak measurement in light of thermodynamics
• Optimal high-level descriptions of dynamical systems
• An Algorithmic Information Theory Critique of Statistical Arguments for Intelligent Design
• Experimental Demonstration of a Measurement-Feedback Quantum Information Engine
• Charge discreteness and the energy efficiency of information erasure in dynamic random-access memory cells
• Retrodicting Chaotic Systems: An Algorithmic Information Theory Approach
• Szilard Engines as Quantum Thermodynamical Systems
• Physical complexity and black hole quantum computers
• Entangling Disciplines: Causality, Entropy and Time-Travel Paradoxes on a Quantum Computer
• Some Properties of the Random Universe
• Thermodynamic Cost of Random-Time Protocols
• The Accelerating Universe and the Second Law
• Thermodynamics of multiple Maxwell demons
• Entropy, Information, and the Updating of Probabilities
• Supremacy of the quantum many-body Szilard engine with attractive bosons
• Landauer Principle and Thermodynamics of Computation
• Is there a physically universal cellular automaton or Hamiltonian?
• Self-Reproduction in Three-Dimensional Reversible Cellular Space
• Carnot's theorem and Szilárd engine
• Power of photonic states: from quantum computation to cosmology
• Structural complexity of minerals: information storage and processing in the mineral world
• An RNA-Based Theory of Natural Universal Computation
• Thermodynamic Constraints in DRAM cells: Experimental Verification of Energy Efficiency Limits in Information Erasure
• Molecular robots guided by prescriptive landscapes
• Energy and information: a chronicle of hesitations on the role of the observer in physics
• Quantum problem solving as simultaneous computation
• Energy Consumption Framework and Analysis of Post-Quantum Key-Generation on Embedded Devices
• The measurement problem in artificial world models
• Lattice-Gas Automata Fluids on Parallel Supercomputers
• More powerful biomolecular computers
• Conservative Join with memory in token-based Brownian circuits and its thermodynamic cost
• Energy-Efficient Pseudo-Ratchet for Brownian Computers through One-Dimensional Quantum Brownian Motion
• Information Thermodynamics in Generalized Probabilistic Theories
• An Information-Theoretic Formalism for Multiscale Structure in Complex Systems
• Ratcheting Up Energy by Means of Measurement
• Gaming security by obscurity
• Highlighting the mechanism of the quantum speedup by time-symmetric and relational quantum mechanics
• Engines of Parsimony: Part III; Performance Trade-offs for Reversible Computers Sharing Resources
• Mechanical Computing: The Computational Complexity of Physical Devices
• The quantum mechanical notion of unobservable causal loop and the\n anthropic principle
• An exact relation between number of black box computations required to solve an oracle problem quantumly and quantum retrocausality
• Information and Entropy in Quantum Brownian Motion
• Thermodynamics of feedback controlled systems
• Work extraction from tripartite entanglement
• Internal Stress as a Link Between Macroscale and Mesoscale Mechanics
• Reversible logic and quantum computers
• Information Is Not Physical: Possibility Spaces, Erasure, and the Structure of Unrealized Alternatives
• Fundamental Work Cost of Quantum Processes
• Time and space bounds for reversible simulation
• Exact Maxwell–Boltzmann, Bose–Einstein and Fermi–Dirac statistics
• Dissipation: The Phase-Space Perspective
• Parallel Warfare: A Strategy for the Future
• Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen, and Shannon
• Stochastic mechano-chemical kinetics of molecular motors: A multidisciplinary enterprise from a physicist’s perspective
• Kardashev's Conundrum: Statistical Falsification of Exponential Energy Growth, the Non-Observation of Type II Technosignatures, and the Kardashev-Sagan-Nakamoto Resolution
• Time, space, and energy in reversible computing
• Experimental verification of Landauer’s principle linking information and thermodynamics
• Entropy Involved in Fidelity of DNA Replication
• Cosmological limits on computation
• Thermodynamic entropy of a many-body energy eigenstate
• Landauer's erasure, error correction and entanglement
• Quantum Szilard Engine
• Critical analysis and remedy of switching failures in straintronic logic using Bennett clocking in the presence of thermal fluctuations
• Dimension of physical systems, information processing, and thermodynamics
• Operational derivation of Boltzmann distribution with Maxwell’s demon model
• Physics-like models of computation
• Thermodynamic cost of measurements
• Work extraction and Landauer's principle in a quantum spin Hall device
• Photonic Maxwell’s Demon
• Information thermodynamics for feedback processes with the appearance of overshooting
• Informational Frustration in Neural Manifolds: Shannon Bottlenecks and the Limits of Learnability
• New Fluctuation Theorem on Maxwell's Demon
• Locally accessible information of multisite quantum ensembles violates entanglement monogamy
• Kinetic discrimination of a polymerase in the presence of obstacles
• Second laws for an information driven current through a spin valve
• Optimal protocols for slowly driven quantum systems
• Quantum Search with In-Place Queries
• Leveraging Environmental Correlations: The Thermodynamics of Requisite Variety
• Information swimmer: Self-propulsion without energy dissipation
• Thermodynamics of quasideterministic digital computers
• Molecular Machines for Quantum Error Correction
• Energetic Costs, Precision, and Transport Efficiency of Molecular Motors
• Single-Atom Demonstration of the Quantum Landauer Principle
• Computation using noise-based logic: efficient string verification over a slow communication channel
• Relations between entropies produced in nondeterministic thermodynamic processes
• Role of mutual information in entropy production under information exchanges
• Thermodynamics as a Consequence of Information Conservation
• Algorithmic independence of initial condition and dynamical law in thermodynamics and causal inference
• Spontaneous Fluctuation-Symmetry Breaking and the Landauer Principle
• The Quantum Speed up as Advanced Cognition of the Solution
• Large work extraction and the Landauer limit in a continuous Maxwell demon
• Generalization of the second law for a nonequilibrium initial state
• Time/Space Trade-Offs for Reversible Computation
• Minimal thermodynamic cost of computing with circuits
• The Locality Gap: A Thermodynamic Law for Objective Facts
• Single-shot work extraction in quantum thermodynamics revisited
• Quantum vertex model for reversible classical computing
• Minimising the heat dissipation of quantum information erasure
• Reversible simulation of irreversible computation
• Reversibility and adiabatic computation: trading time and space for energy
• Quantum computation based on retarded and advanced propagation
• A mechanical Turing machine: blueprint for a biomolecular computer. [europepmc]
• Constructor theory of life. [europepmc]
• Brain activity and cognition: a connection from thermodynamics and information theory. [europepmc]
• Artificial Molecular Machines. [europepmc]
• Molecular machines operating on the nanoscale: from classical to quantum. [europepmc]
• Computing exponentially faster: implementing a non-deterministic universal Turing machine using DNA. [europepmc]
• Designing the optimal bit: balancing energetic cost, speed and reliability. [europepmc]
• The thermodynamic efficiency of computations made in cells across the range of life. [europepmc]
• Generalized laws of thermodynamics in the presence of correlations. [europepmc]
• Brain entropy and human intelligence: A resting-state fMRI study. [europepmc]
• The importance of thermodynamics for molecular systems, and the importance of molecular systems for thermodynamics. [europepmc]
• Quantum theory cannot consistently describe the use of itself. [europepmc]
• High-Performance Biocomputing in Synthetic Biology-Integrated Transcriptional and Metabolic Circuits. [europepmc]
• A theory and methodology to quantify knowledge. [europepmc]
• Efficiency fluctuations and noise induced refrigerator-to-heater transition in information engines. [europepmc]
• Programming and simulating chemical reaction networks on a surface. [europepmc]
• The thermodynamics of thinking: connections between neural activity, energy metabolism and blood flow. [europepmc]
• Landauer's Principle in a Quantum Szilard Engine without Maxwell's Demon. [europepmc]
• Landauer Principle and General Relativity. [europepmc]
• Computational animal welfare: towards cognitive architecture models of animal sentience, emotion and wellbeing. [europepmc]
• Entropy, Information, and the Updating of Probabilities. [europepmc]
• Predicting phenotype transition probabilities via conditional algorithmic probability approximations. [europepmc]
• Thermodynamical versus Logical Irreversibility: A Concrete Objection to Landauer's Principle. [europepmc]
• The energy challenges of artificial superintelligence. [europepmc]
• Fundamental constraints to the logic of living systems. [europepmc]