> Specifically, while superconducting technology eliminates the cost of moving bits within the superconducting domain, the cost of transferring data from the outside into the superconducting domain does dissipate energy at 4 K. Consequently, superconducting is expected to perform poorly on, for example, big data applications where the bulk of data is streamed from the outside into the processor. What is more, the energy cost of logic in superconducting circuits is expected to be similar to that of CMOS.
If you read the broad agency announcement, they even have explicit energy dissipation targets (per bit). I think it’s something like attoJoules or femtoJoules?
https://www.iarpa.gov/index.php/research-programs/supercable...
This isn't really my area of expertise, but the 4K referenced here seems to be the operating temperature.
I imagine the thermodynamics of moving data around changes if you have room-temperature superconducting materials and aren't constrained to cryogenic computing, but I am not really sure what the impact would be on mitigating (or exacerbating) this kind of data transfer cost.
[0]: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.10...
Apparently. Whole article sounds like science-fiction. 500x efficiency increase while scaling operating frequencies 250x.