When Information Is Not Enough: Accuracy-Constrained Thermodynamic Costs of Binary Classification

Abstract

How much entropy must a physical classifier produce to achieve a prescribed accuracy? Rate--distortion theory specifies the minimum information required, but does that information threshold suffice to determine the physical cost? We show that it does not, even for a binary task and a two-state memory. For a uniform binary target observed through a finite symmetric experiment, replacing the classification-error constraint with its necessary mutual-information threshold strictly lowers the infimum of entropy production under a common operation time, integrated mobility budget, and sufficiently large finite transition-rate cap. The separation holds whenever the target error lies strictly between the Bayes error of the observations and chance. Two results establish this physical gap. First, ordering observations by posterior confidence gives exact transport--risk and transport--information frontiers. Observations with the same Bayes error can have different cost frontiers. Second, we construct bounded-rate protocols that realize prescribed encoders with write probabilities below one, starting from exact reset, with an explicit excess cost above the transport bound. An achievable information-constrained cost then falls below a lower bound valid for every task-feasible protocol. Examples with repeated noisy observations illustrate the separation. The results identify a limitation of information-only benchmarks for physical classification: task accuracy and kinetic constraints must be retained explicitly. The cost analyzed is total entropy production during memory writing, excluding data acquisition, controller operation, and subsequent reset.