Vaire Computing has built a reversible computing test chip with a resonator component capable of recycling 50 percent of its energy, on average.

In a statement, the company said the achievement marks a “significant first step on the path towards building near-zero energy chips as a viable alternative to the energy intensity of classical compute architectures.”

Classical semiconductors recycle zero percent of their energy.

The resonator in Vaire’s chips captures the electrical energy that would normally be lost as heat and swings it back into the system to be used for more calculations. However, the company did note that the result applies only to the resonator and excludes significant additional energy overheads.

Founded in 2021 and based in London and Cambridge in the UK and Seattle, Washington in the US, Vaire Computing is a reversible computing startup developing what it calls “near-zero energy chips,” a term that Vaire co-founder and CEO, Rodolfo Rosini told DCD the company coined and prefers to the industry accepted term of “resonant adiabatic reversible computing.”

At its most basic level, reversible computing aims to reduce the waste heat generated by traditional processors. When chips execute operations, the compute power needed generates waste heat – because energy cannot be created or destroyed, an input that receives two units of bit-energy uses one unit of bit-energy to perform the output and then loses the second bit-unit in the form of heat.

According to Vaire, its recent tape out represents the first time a full stack application has successfully demonstrated the concept of reversible computing in a foundry setting, with future tape outs set to focus on improving performance, reducing size, and further increasing the amount of energy reused.

Speaking to DCD in 2024, Rosini said following the company’s first tape out, Vaire would be targeting full-scale production by 2027.

“We hold all the key patents for the technology, and we have the top talent, so we’re trying to get to a product before everyone else,” he said. “I’m bullish about building 60 billion chips.“

You can read the full interview with Rosini here.