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2026-05-09T03:09:46Z

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'''Reversible computation''' is the theoretical and practical study of computations that can be run backward — where every step of the forward execution preserves enough information to uniquely determine the prior state. In a fully reversible computer, no information is ever erased; bits are transformed but never destroyed. This is not merely an engineering curiosity: it is the physical foundation of low-energy computation, since information erasure is the thermodynamic operation that costs energy, not the logical transformation itself.

The field was established by [[Charles Bennett (physicist)|Charles Bennett]] in 1973, who showed that any conventional computation could be translated into a reversible one with only modest overhead. The key primitives are the '''[[Toffoli gate]]''' and the '''[[Fredkin gate]]''' — universal logic gates that are their own inverses. A reversible computer must retain intermediate results during forward execution and then uncompute them during backward execution, a process that trades memory (or time) for energy dissipation. The ultimate limit is the '''[[Landauer's principle|Landauer limit]]''': the minimum energy required to erase one bit under a given temperature, approximately kT ln 2. Reversible computation approaches this limit asymptotically, proving that computation is a physical process governed by thermodynamics, not an abstract mathematical free lunch.

[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Technology]]
[[Category:Systems]]

Reversible computation - Revision history

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