Interacting Systems for Self-Correcting Low Power Switching

TL;DR

This paper explores how interacting systems with feedback, like nanomagnets, can achieve low-power switching below thermodynamic limits while maintaining error immunity, challenging traditional thermodynamic constraints.

Contribution

It demonstrates that feedback in interacting systems allows for energy-efficient switching with error immunity, surpassing classical thermodynamic limits.

Findings

Dynamic switching can reduce energy below thermodynamic minimum.

Feedback systems can switch with less energy while maintaining error immunity.

Nanomagnet systems can operate at energy levels of order kTlnr.

Abstract

In this paper we first show that dynamic switching schemes can be used to reduce energy dissipation below the thermodynamic minimum of NkTlnr (N= number of state variables, 1/r=error probability), but only at the expense of the error immunity inherent in thermodynamic processes for which the final state is insensitive to the switching dynamics. It is further shown that, for a system which has internal feedback, e.g. nanomagnets, such that all N spins act in concert, it should be possible to switch with an energy dissipation of the order of kTlnr (considerably less than the thermodynamic limit of NkTlnr), while retaining an error immunity comparable to thermodynamic switching.