Thermodynamics of deterministic finite automata operating locally and periodically

Understand

Real-world computers have operational constraints that cause nonzero entropy production (EP).

• In particular, almost all real-world computers are ``periodic'', iteratively undergoing the same physical process; and ``local", in that subsystems evolve whilst physically decoupled from the rest of the computer.
• These constraints are so universal because decomposing a complex computation into small, iterative calculations is what makes computers so powerful.
• We first derive the nonzero EP caused by the locality and periodicity constraints for deterministic finite automata (DFA), a foundational system of computer science theory.