Luca Gammaitoni
Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Perugia

Operating basic switches in the presence of large fluctuations: minimal energy consideration

According to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors in the next 10-15 years the limits imposed by the physics of switch operation will be the major roadblock for future scaling of the ICT devices. Among these limits the most fundamental is represented by the heat dissipated during operation and the presence of large fluctuations. Here we discuss a simple switch conceptual model that shows that the fundamental lower limit in energy dissipation can be beaten by trading the dissipated energy with the uncertainty in the distinguishability of switch logic states. We establish a general relation between the minimum required energy and the maximum error rate in the switch operation and briefly discuss the potential applications in the design of future switches.

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