Vaire Computing aims to cut chip heat with reversible computing

Vaire Computing cofounder and chief technology officer Hannah Earley is building chips designed to recycle energy that conventional processors lose as heat. The startup is pursuing reversible computing, an approach that keeps intermediate information during calculations so circuits can run computations backward and recover some energy instead of dissipating it.

The concept was proposed more than 50 years ago, but earlier transistor and circuit designs made it difficult to implement. Earley has designed a patent-pending resonator, a microscopic chip component that stores recovered energy for later reuse. Vaire recently demonstrated a chip whose resonator recovered more energy than it lost after accounting for the energy needed to power the component.

Researchers see promise but caution that commercialization remains distant. Igor Markov, an electronic design automation researcher and former University of Michigan, Ann Arbor professor, said the company will need more realistic demonstrations to win industry support. Vaire’s next task is adapting its unconventional architecture to familiar devices and manufacturing systems.