E-CoRe Energy-Conscious Reversible Computing
Setting the stage for the Reversible Computing revolution. Training the next generation of experts to make computing sustainable.
Energy-Efficient Computing via Reversibility
Pioneering the future of sustainable computing
Global energy from IT
The Energy Challenge
Energy is a main concern in current society.
Limited natural resources and high production costs lead to energy shortages. Energy consumption causes complex and undesirable phenomena such as pollution and global warming.
IT accounts for a surprisingly large fraction of global energy consumption — estimated at 10%. Hence, energy efficiency in computing is a critical and necessary research area, called green computing.
The Reversible Computing Revolution
The laws of physics — Landauer's principle in particular — fix a lower bound to the amount of energy needed to perform an irreversible computation, proportional to the number of bits of information discarded by it.
Classical computing discards large amounts of information (e.g. x=0 on 64 bits discards 64 bits), while reversible computing (RC) discards none, avoiding Landauer's lower bound.
Although the fraction of energy lost due to Landauer's principle is currently small (~1‰), it will become increasingly relevant as hardware technology improves. RC will become a main player in the quest for energy-efficient computing.
Preparing for the RC Revolution
The world, EU research, and the software industry are not yet ready for the Reversible Computing revolution.
RC is a young and relatively small area, albeit with breakthrough applications in robotics, debugging, and parallel simulation. Reversible programming languages exist, but they are at the stage of academic prototypes, missing key elements such as error handling and modularity, libraries of relevant algorithms, and high-level tool support.
E-CoRe aims at setting the stage for the RC revolution by forming a community of experts with deep understanding of RC intricacies, who will improve and popularize RC languages, algorithms and architectures — in particular in energy-intensive applications such as machine learning, blockchains and drones.
Beyond energy efficiency, RC also benefits other aspects of software: ease of debugging, reliability and security.
Scientific Structure
The project is structured into 4 work packages
Architectures
Reversible computing architectures and hardware design.
Languages
Reversible programming languages and tool support.
Algorithms
Libraries and algorithms for reversible computation.
Applications
Energy-intensive applications: ML, blockchains, drones.
Explore Opportunities
Join the E-CoRe network and shape the future of energy-efficient computing.