3 ms·
But you have to save lots of undesirable info in order to maintain the reversibility right? Once you delete that don't you lose the efficiency gains?
by patagurbon 6y ago
But you have to save lots of undesirable info in order to maintain the reversibility right? Once you delete that don't you lose the efficiency gains?
- jlokier 6y agoYou don't need to delete the extra info. After reading the output, you run the entire computation backwards (it's reversible after all) until the only state in the system is the original input and initial state. Then you can change the input to do another calculation. If implemented "perfectly", heat is produced when changing the input and to read the output. Reading the output will disturb it so the computation won't perfectly reverse in practice, however if the disturbance is small, most of the energy temporarily held in circuit is supposed to bounce back to the initial state, which can then be reset properly at an appropriately small cost. Quantum computation is very similar to all of this. It too is reversible, and costs energy to set inputs, read outputs and clear accumulated noise/errors. The connection between reversible computation and quantum computation is quite deep.