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Re:Are “reversible” computers more energy efficient, faster?... by ahelwer on Saturday July 25, 2020 @06:38PM (#23952928)
If anyone is interested in example of a reversible operation, the simplest one is logical negation of a single bit. The second-simplest is CNOT, or controlled-not, where one bit is the "control" bit and another bit is the "target" bit. If the control bit is 1, the target bit is flipped. If the control bit is 0, the target bit is unchanged. The control bit is always left unchanged.

A very important reversible gate is the CCNOT gate (also called a Toffoli gate) which has two control bits that only flip the target bit if both are 1. This is a universal gate: any reversible logical operation can be constructed from a series of Toffoli gates.

The article refers to reversible computers as "quantum computing's practical cousin" because all operations on a quantum computer are reversible (except for measurement). You may recall the recent pop science headline "scientists reverse time using a quantum computer"[1], which was a hideous mangling of this concept.

[1] https://phys.org/news/2019-03-physicists-reverse-quantum.htm...

Re:Are “reversible” computers more energy efficient, faster?... by JadeNB on Saturday July 25, 2020 @07:47PM (#23953251)
> The second-simplest is CNOT, or controlled-not, where one bit is the "control" bit and another bit is the "target" bit. If the control bit is 1, the target bit is flipped. If the control bit is 0, the target bit is unchanged. The control bit is always left unchanged.

Isn't this just XOR?

Re:Are “reversible” computers more energy efficient, faster?... by im3w1l on Saturday July 25, 2020 @07:51PM (#23953270)
No because it takes two inputs and gives two outputs. One input is passed through unchanged, and the other output is indeed xor.
Re:Are “reversible” computers more energy efficient, faster?... by saagarjha on Saturday July 25, 2020 @10:03PM (#23953844)
And hence it is reversible, since you can get the inputs back from that output!
Re:Are “reversible” computers more energy efficient, faster?... by sukilot on Saturday July 25, 2020 @11:24PM (#23954186)
In normal human arithmetic, it's equivalent to saying something like "7+5= 12" and remembering the "+5" so you can undo it later.