On 1/8/2011 7:44 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> It was an "alternate" design to existing ones, which would allow more
>> speed, but at less cost.
>
> Errr, no, not really. The thing about reversible computing is that it
> takes just as much energy to run in the forward direction if you want to
> progress at the same speed. If you get half way through a calculation
> and stop applying a power gradient, you're equally likely to go either
> direction. You can use arbitrarily little energy, but you'll go
> arbitrarily slowly forward.
>
>> What, if anything, it had to do with quantum computing, from that
>> article, would be rather unclear, since it quite literally never
>> mentioned it at all.
>
> Quantum computing is the only *actual* reversible machines out there,
> afaik. (Well, reversible in the sense of actually saving power to do so.)
>
Think we may be talking about different things here... The idea I am 
talking about is that you programmaticaly do the equivalent of:

1 + 2 + 4 * 5 = result
roll back to 1 + 2
3 * 10 + 5 = result

The point of the idea being that if you do not have to "turn on" a 
switch, only shut some off, the cost is lower. The trick being how to 
know if the previous state *is* going to do that. Its an insanely mind 
boggling idea, but some limited experiments have been done with it, and 
it didn't require a quantum computer to do so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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