Knowledge systems — genetic, cultural, computational — are dissipative structures in the sense of Prigogine: they hold local order only while exporting entropy to their environment. A cell, a library, a reasoning machine — each persists because it is burning free energy against the drift toward disorder. The bill is physical.
Data movement is an architectural constraint and a motivation for the separate Gentian silicon research track. Its public physical-design result covers area and a timing budget in a logic-only academic-PDK flow. Gentian itself is the multi-GPU software product.
Notes
Knowledge and entropy — from living systems to AI
Thermodynamic framing of knowledge amplification: Gibbs free energy, Shannon entropy reduction, dissipative structures, Landauer's principle.
Historical evolution of knowledge systems
Epochs of knowledge evolution — genetic inheritance, social learning, language, writing, print, digital systems, AI — analysed through the same thermodynamic lens.