Computing with uncertainty can help lowering the minimum energy required?

In the last forty years the semiconductor industry has been driven by its ability to scale down the size of the CMOS-FET switches, the building block of present computing devices, and to increase computing capability density up to a point where the
power dissipated in heat during computation has become a serious limitation. According to the ITRS the limits imposed by the physics of switch operation will be the roadblock for future scaling in the next 10-15 years. The theoretical limit on the minimum energy per switching is set at kBT ln(2) (approx 10-21 J at room temperature) identified with the so-called Shannon–von Neumann–Landauer limit when information is erased in the process. Here we discuss the possibility of reducing such limit by trading the minimum energy with uncertainty in the distinguishability of switch logic states.