Insights into classical irreversible computation using quantum information concepts

TL;DR

This paper applies quantum information theory concepts to analyze irreversible classical computation, providing new insights into the complexity of logic operations and testing the approach on specific computational tasks.

Contribution

It generalizes quantum information methods to irreversible classical computing and analyzes logic gates to understand their complexity.

Findings

Successful application of quantum concepts to classical irreversible computation

Calculation of nonlocal content of quantum transformations for logic gates

New insights into the complexity of logic operations

Abstract

The method of using concepts and insight from quantum information theory in order to solve problems in reversible classical computing (introduced in Ref. [1]) have been generalized to irreversible classical computing. The method have been successfully tested on two computational tasks. Several basic logic gates have been analyzed and the nonlocal content of the associate quantum transformations have been calculated. The results provide us with new interesting insight into the notion of complexity of logic operations.