Will energy-free computing reactions ever take place?
In 1961, the physicist Rolf Landauer formulated a principle that any transformation of information that takes place in a computer requires energy, thus making zero-power computing a pipe dream. The field-effect transistor, invented in 1959, replaced the energy-hungry vacuum tubes used in computers. Because of its small size and low individual energy demands, the FET revolutionised computer technology. But with 100 billion transistors on an area of a square millimeter, current advanced chips dissipate up to 100 Watt per cm2. In real terms, this means that the data centres operated by Google, Facebook and Amazon require enormous amounts of energy. In the US, data centers currently consume 2% of total US energy production – about 20 mid-sized power plants. To make matters worse for scientists trying to reduce energy consumption, the idea that information itself could dissipate energy came as an unexpected surprise when it was proposed by Landauer. He based his idea on the second law of thermodynamics, which states that any decrease of entropy - a measure of order - in a closed system is accompanied by the dissipation of energy, which is lost. He argued that information itself could effect a change of entropy, giving the example of a logical gate as found in computers, which converts an incoming 0 or 1 into a 0. This process is irreversible because the output, 0, does not allow to determine whether the input was a 0 or a 1, so the operation has resulted in ‘information erasure.’ Landauer equated the lost information to energy that is dissipated. Scientists have been grappling with the consequences of the Landauer Principle ever since. But it presents an opportunity: modern day computers use millions of times the energy of the Landauer limit for everyday processes, so better understanding how to get reactions closer to it could provide a fundamental shift in how we consume energy. Now, a surprising experimental result by Luca Gammaitoni and two colleagues, Miquel Lopez-Suárez and Igor Neri at the University of Perugia, Italy, may prove to be game changer. The research was conducted under the EU LANDAUER project, supported by the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) programme and completed in 2015, which focused on reducing the power consumption of data processing. “As soon as we started to work on the project, we realised there was something wrong in the common understanding of the Landauer Principle," recalls Gammaitoni. In their proof of concept experiment they built an electromechanical OR logic gate (a 0 or a 1 is converted to a 0). It consisted of a tiny cantilever that bends in response to voltages applied to probes close to the cantilever tip. This setup allowed the researchers to mimic a logic gate consisting of a transistor. Because the forces to operate the logic gate are so small, it was possible to calculate the power used to perform a single logic operation, and check whether a dissipation caused by a logic operation took place. It didn’t. They found that a logic operation could be performed with an energy toll that was only 5% of the expected Landauer Limit. "We are now looking for another source of funding to carry on with this research. Our goal is to build an entire computing device to show that you can do all of the computation," says Gammaitoni. Read more: http://www.fetfx.eu/story/will-energy-free-computing-reactions-ever-take-place/
Keywords
energy, computing, technology
Countries
Germany, Israel, Italy