[marshray]

Clocking and changing register states requires charging and discharging the gate capacitance of a bunch of MOSFET transistors. The current that results from moving all that charge around encounters resistance, which converts it to heat. Silicon is only a "semi" conductor after all.

You are correct that there is energy bound in the information stored in the chip. But last I checked, our most efficient chips (e.g., using reversible computing to avoid wasting that energy) are still orders of magnitude less efficient than those theoretical limits.

[dcrazy]

Thank you for encouraging me to go on this educational adventure. I have now heard of Landauer’s principle, which says each bit of information releases 2.9e-21 joules when destroyed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle