Breakthrough in reversible computing technology promises to solve the computing industry's energy crisis

In today's computers, when we switch a transistor from 0 to 1, we charge it up (requiring energy), and when we're done, we discharge it, losing all that energy as heat. It's like filling a bucket with water only to immediately dump it out.

The computing industry faces a looming energy crisis as the skyrocketing demand for power from data centers, AI systems, and edge devices strains electrical grids and challenges sustainability goals

As reported in IEEE Spectrum, Vaire Computing has found a way to save computational energy using what they call a resonator system. "It's kind of like a swinging pendulum," explains Hannah Earley, Vaire's chief technology officer of the reversible computing startup. Instead of just dumping the energy, they capture and reuse it.

Here's how it works:

  1. When computing needs to happen, electrical energy charges the circuit (pendulum swings up)
  2. The computation occurs at the peak of the swing
  3. Instead of letting the energy dissipate as heat, it's captured as the pendulum swings back down
  4. This recovered energy is used for the next computation

"On each upswing, one computational step is performed. On each downswing, a decomputation is performed, recovering the energy," the IEEE Spectrum article explains. The system uses special slowly-ramping voltage patterns (called adiabatic switching) to minimize energy loss during these transitions.

While some energy is still lost (just as a real pendulum eventually stops swinging due to friction), the system can be remarkably efficient. Vaire's upcoming MEMS-based resonator is expected to achieve 99.97% energy recovery.

"In principle, this allows [us], over the next 10 to 15 years, to get to 4,000x improvement in performance," says Earley.

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Weird computer architectures
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