Efficiency of a representation
Cells create protein engines (mRNA) for 100kT/bit
0.03µm transistors consume 100kT per switching event
Think of representational efficiency
- What does each system get for 100kT?
Digital logic uses an impoverished representation
- 104 switching events to perform an 8-bit multiply
- Semiconductor scaling doesn’t improve the representation
- We pay a huge thermodynamic cost to use discrete math
Does biology do better? Can we define a metric?