How to train your demon to do fast information erasure without heat production.

Abstract

Time-dependent protocols that perform irreversible logical operations, such as memory erasure, cost work and produce heat, placing bounds on the efficiency of computers. Here we use a prototypical computer model of a physical memory to show that it is possible to learn feedback-control protocols to do fast memory erasure without input of work or production of heat. These protocols, which are enacted by a neural-network "demon," do not violate the second law of thermodynamics because the demon generates more heat than the memory absorbs. The result is a form of nonlocal heat exchange in which one computation is rendered energetically favorable while a compensating one produces heat elsewhere, a tactic that could be used to rationally design the flow of energy within a computer.