Someone once told me that with reversible computers there is no energy cost for the computation itself, there is only a cost for running the hardware. But is this true in practice, or is it only an idealization?
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6"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are different." – John Doty Mar 19 '23 at 20:52
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Maybe a better fit for [cs.se]. – StephenG - Help Ukraine Mar 19 '23 at 20:54
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You are asking about the Landauer principle. Imho this is an ineradicable myth coming from a confusion of Shannon entropy with thermodynamical entropy. – Kurt G. Mar 19 '23 at 21:06
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Nobody has built a reversible computer yet. In principle, we know there is a theoretical minimum energy cost for non-reversible computations, and we know reversible computers could be a loophole to bypass it. But nobody's actually built one that does. Our best computers today still use zillions of times more energy than the theoretical limit – user253751 Mar 20 '23 at 01:24