About - Thermodynamics of Computation

The thermodynamic restrictions on all systems that perform computation provide major challenges to the modern design of computers. For example, at present ~5% of US energy consumption is used to run computers. Similarly, ~50% of the lifetime budget of a modern high-performance computing center is to pay the energy bill. As another example, Google has placed some of their data centers next to rivers in order to use the water in the river to remove the heat they generate. As a final example, one of the major challenges facing current efforts to build exascale computers is how to keep them from melting. The thermodynamic costs of performing computation also play a major role in biological computation. For example, ~20% of the calories burned by a human are used by their brain — which does nothing but compute. This is a massive reproductive fitness penalty. Indeed, one of the leading contenders for which development in hominin evolution allowed us to develop into homo sapiens is the discov

The thermodynamic restrictions on all systems that perform computation provide major challenges to the modern design of computers. For example, at present ~5% of US energy consumption is used to run computers. Similarly, ~50% of the lifetime budget of a modern high-performance computing center is to pay the energy bill. As another example, Google has placed some of their data centers next to rivers in order to use the water in the river to remove the heat they generate. As a final example, one of the major challenges facing current efforts to build exascale computers is how to keep them from m