Reversible Computing: A Potential Energy Efficiency Game Changer?

The energy efficiency bottleneck plaguing the chip industry may soon be overcome by reversible computing. This technology cleverly avoids information erasure to save energy, theoretically achieving up to a 4,000x energy efficiency improvement. Vaire Computing is working to commercialize this technology, which has remained in academia for three decades. They plan to launch their first reversible computing chip prototype in Q1 2025, designed to recover energy used in arithmetic circuits. Future plans include energy-efficient processors for AI inference. While challenges remain, this technology offers a new hope for the computing field after the slowdown of Moore's Law.