Performance limits and trade-offs in entropy-driven biochemical computers

Abstract

The properties and fundamental limits of chemical computers have recently attracted significant interest as a model of computation, an unifying principle of cellular organisation and in the context of bio-engineering. As of yet, research in this topic is based on case-studies. There exists no generally accepted criterion to distinguish between chemical processes that compute and those that do not. Here, the concept of entropy driven computer (EDC) is proposed as a general model of chemical computation. It is found that entropy driven computation is subject to a trade-off between accuracy and entropy production, but unlike many biological systems, there are no trade-offs involving time. The latter only arise when it is taken into account that the observation of the state of the EDC is not energy neutral, but comes at a cost. The significance of this conclusion in relation to biological systems is discussed. Three examples of biological computers, including an implementation of a neural network as an EDC are given.