arXiv Machine Learning

Thermodynamic cost of inference and learning in physical neural networks

The paper investigates the thermodynamic cost of inference and learning in physical neural networks. It shows that quasi‑static inference requires no work, while finite‑speed inference incurs work bounded by the Wasserstein‑2 distance between thermal states, roughly $k_B T$ per dimension of the widest layer. Learning, however, has an irreducible cost of a few $k_B T$ per parameter, independent of speed, indicating that memory dominates the thermodynamic price.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 30

On the robustness of noisy solutions in non-convex neural networks

arXiv:2607. 27000v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Optimization in non-convex neural network models is strongly influenced by the geometry of the solution space: sparse, isolated, point-like clusters are typically algorithmically inaccessible, whereas wide and flat regions can be found efficiently despite being relatively rare.

By Enrico M. Malatesta, Alessandra Passalacqua, Riccardo Zecchina
arXiv AI
Jul 2

Scaling Up Thermodynamic AI Models

arXiv:2607. 00170v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Thermodynamic computing devices based on the Ising model show great promise for low-power AI inference and edge computing, but scalable methods for training large models for such hardware remain limited.

By Andrew G. Moore
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jun 30

Scaling Up Thermodynamic AI Models

Thermodynamic computing devices based on the Ising model show great promise for low-power AI inference and edge computing, but scalable methods for training large models for such hardware remain limited. Prior theory shows that the time-averaged behavior of high-temperature Gibbs-sampled Ising systems can implement feed-forward neural inference.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 9

GENERIC-FNO: Embedding Energy Conservation and Entropy Production into Fourier Neural Operators

arXiv:2606. 08343v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We introduce GENERIC-FNO, the first neural operator to embed the full GENERIC (metriplectic) structure of nonequilibrium thermodynamics -- reversible, energy-conserving dynamics and irreversible, entropy-producing dynamics coupled through the degeneracy conditions -- directly in function space.

By Jason Sulskis, Sathya Ravi
arXiv AI
Jun 2

Equilibrium Propagation for Non-Conservative Systems

arXiv:2602. 03670v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Equilibrium Propagation (EP) is a physics-inspired learning algorithm that uses stationary states of a dynamical system both for inference and learning.

By Antonino Emanuele Scurria, Dimitri Vanden Abeele, Bortolo Matteo Mognetti, Serge Massar
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 15

Beyond Noise: Understanding and Overcoming Temperature Effects in Analog DNN Inference

The paper investigates how temperature affects analog deep neural network (DNN) inference, focusing on both stochastic and systematic non‑idealities in analog hardware. Experiments show that temperature‑induced performance loss is mainly driven by systematic errors rather than random noise. The study evaluates various mitigation techniques, finding that noise‑aware training and temperature‑aware calibration—especially hardware‑in‑the‑loop training—best preserve inference accuracy across different thermal conditions.

By Niklas Summ, Xiao Wang, Hendrik Borras, Bernhard Klein, Holger Fr\"oning