What Is the Thermodynamic Limit on Energy Per LLM Token?

prateekj · x · 2026-08-14

This thread explores the theoretical lower bound of energy consumption per generated token. Based on Landauer's principle, erasing a single classical bit at room temperature requires at least 2.9 x 10^-21 joules, an experimentally demonstrated thermodynamic limit.

However, this does not represent a meaningful minimum energy for AI inference. In the real world, generating a token involves storing state, moving signals, suppressing noise, correcting errors, and synchronizing components. Current computers operate many orders of magnitude above the Landauer limit.

Original post →

More from Infra

Infra channel →