论文标题
守护计算机与千里眼计算机:计算能源消耗的纯粹理论观点
Daemon computers versus clairvoyant computers: A pure theoretical viewpoint towards energy consumption of computing
论文作者
论文摘要
计算的能源消耗已经提高了突出,但该地区仍然缺乏合并的形式理论。在本文中,计算能源消耗的理论是作为公理系统的。这项工作纯粹是理论上的,涉及定理证明和数学推理。它也是跨学科的,因此在靶向计算时,它涉及理论物理学(热力学和统计力学)和信息理论。该理论与理论物理学中的现有理论并不矛盾,并符合它们,因为它确实采用了其公理。然而,该理论导致了以前的作品中没有讨论的有趣而重要的结论。其中一些是:(i)Landauer的原则被证明是可证明的定理,只要一个名为宏观的决定论的先决条件。 (ii)证明,实际随机性(不是伪随机性)可以与计算结合或作为可逆性的替代性,以实现更多的节能。 (iii)理论提出了以下概念:使用真实随机性的计算机显然可能会挑战热力学的第二定律。这些是麦克斯韦(Maxwell)热力学守护程序的计算对应物,因此被命名为守护程序。 (iv)证明,如果我们不接受守护计算机的存在(符合热力学的第二定律),则必须存在另一种类型的计算机,称为千里计算机,可以通过真实的随机性获得有关其他物理系统的信息。该定理可能为普林斯顿大学全球意识项目中的真实随机性提供了一个理论上的解释。
Energy consumption of computing has found increasing prominence but the area still suffers from the lack of a consolidated formal theory. In this paper, a theory for the energy consumption of computing is structured as an axiomatic system. The work is pure theoretical, involving theorem proving and mathematical reasoning. It is also interdisciplinary, so that while it targets computing, it involves theoretical physics (thermodynamics and statistical mechanics) and information theory. The theory does not contradict existing theories in theoretical physics and conforms to them as indeed it adopts its axioms from them. Nevertheless, the theory leads to interesting and important conclusions that have not been discussed in previous work. Some of them are: (i) Landauer's principle is shown to be a provable theorem provided that a precondition, named macroscopic determinism, holds. (ii) It is proved that real randomness (not pseudo randomness) can be used in computing in conjunction with or as an alternative to reversibility to achieve more energy saving. (iii) The theory propounds the concept that computers that use real randomness may apparently challenge the second law of thermodynamics. These are computational counterpart to Maxwell's daemon in thermodynamics and hence are named daemon computers. (iv) It is proved that if we do not accept the existence of daemon computers (to conform to the second law of thermodynamics), another type of computers, named clairvoyant computers, must exist that can gain information about other physical systems through real randomness. This theorem probably provides a theoretical explanation for strange observations about real randomness made in the global consciousness project at Princeton University.