Dates: October 26-30, 2026
Location: UT Austin, Austin, Texas
Organizers:
Computer science theory traditionally examines computational costs like time and memory usage. While energy consumption and heat generation are critical in real computers, their theoretical analysis has been limited due to the inability of conventional statistical physics to analyze systems that involve complex operating conditions such as non-equilibrium states, finite processing times, multiple components, along with constraints on their allowed properties. The currently unfolding new field of (stochastic) thermodynamics provides tools to analyze these real-world thermodynamic costs.
Previous successful workshops organized at Santa Fe Institute brought together computer scientists and physicists from three continents to explore these intersections, resulting in many ongoing collaborations. Building on the strong foundation of the previous meetings, this workshop is designed to deepen these collaborations and generate tangible outcomes.
A series of tutorials and detailed lecture notes will be made available to all participants, ensuring that both newcomers and seasoned researchers have access to cutting-edge methodologies and theoretical frameworks in thermodynamics of computation. To encourage deeper understanding of the other field, some tutorials will be given by members of the opposite field (i.e., CS theory tutorials by stochastic thermodynamics researchers, and stochastic thermodynamics tutorials by CS theory researchers).
This workshop is by invitation only.
Details coming soon.
For questions, please contact david.soloveichik@utexas.edu.
Support for this workshop comes from the Schmidt Science Polymath Award to DS.