Reversible electronic logic using switches

Abstract

Two methods of using switches to implement reversible computations are discussed. The first method has an energy dissipation which is proportional to the square of the error in the voltage, while the second method has an energy dissipation which can in principle be reduced indefinitely by slowing the speed of computation. The first method is basically an extension to 'pass logic' which has been previously used with both nMOS (hot clock nMOS) and CMOS transmission gates to achieve low energy dissipation. The second method is a novel thermodynamically reversible logic system based on CCD-like operations which switches charge packets in a reversible fashion to achieve low energy dissipation.