Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

It turns out that some people are already combining this principle by making adiabatic superconductor microchips!

https://spectrum.ieee.org/new-superconductor-microprocessor-...

I don't think this actually affects the high level opcodes, i.e it's transparent, so long as the circuit implementing them somehow performs charge recovery, the high level programming can still appear to be irreversible (I don't want to think about the potential side channel attacks that causes when you want to zero some bits!).



Reversible logic is fun, but the memory requirements get intense. You need enough storage to retain every intermediate value used in a computation. If you have a 1GHz 64-bit processor and it does an hour-long computation, you need to store the entire 29TB history of its intermediates... and then spend an hour unwinding it!

But currently, the adiabatic chips has a bigger issue with getting to zero: their control circuitry is a bank of AWGs, each burning probably hundreds of watts at room temperature. They ideally don't produce heat in the cold zone, which is great for the cryogenic system, but if we have room temperature superconductors, that's suddenly moot.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: