According to a September 24 report, UK startup Vaire Computing has developed the world’s first reversible computing chip, named “Ice River.” Its breakthrough lies in reusing input energy, significantly reducing power consumption and offering a new approach to tackling chip energy waste.
Traditional computer chips have a critical flaw: all electricity consumed during computation is converted into waste heat, especially under high loads. In data centers and AI applications, this leads to substantial cooling demands and high energy costs.
The Ice River chip addresses two key inefficiencies:
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Eliminating information erasure loss: Conventional chips erase original 0s and 1s, generating heat. Ice River uses reversible logic, allowing original data to be recovered through reverse computation, avoiding this loss.
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Reducing voltage switching loss: Instead of rapid voltage shifts that generate heat, the chip uses adiabatic computing with gradual voltage changes, retaining some energy for subsequent operations.
An August proof-of-concept showed the chip reduces power consumption by 30% compared to conventional chips with similar performance. Challenges remain, including slower computation speed, higher costs, and the need to improve heat recovery efficiency.
ICgoodFind : The Ice River chip marks a hardware breakthrough in energy-recyclable computing, opening a new path toward low-power semiconductor design despite existing scalability challenges.
