Programming
Academia
Reversible computing rests on a small set of foundational papers — half a century of results linking information, logic and thermodynamics. These are the works to read first, each linked to its source.
Irreversibility and Heat Generation in the Computing Process →
The origin of Landauer's principle: erasing information has an unavoidable thermodynamic cost.
Landauer, R. · IBM J. R&D 5(3) · 1961
Logical Reversibility of Computation →
Founded reversible computation by showing any computation can be done without discarding information.
Bennett, C. H. · IBM J. R&D 17(6) · 1973
The Thermodynamics of Computation — a Review →
A wide survey tying the physics of information firmly to the limits of computing.
Bennett, C. H. · Int. J. Theor. Phys. 21(12) · 1982
Conservative Logic →
Introduces the Fredkin and Toffoli gates and a model of reversible, information-conserving computation.
Fredkin, E. & Toffoli, T. · Int. J. Theor. Phys. 21(3–4) · 1982
Reversible Computing →
An early, influential treatment of reversible machines and their universality.
Toffoli, T. · ICALP 1980 (LNCS 85) · 1980
Time/Space Trade-offs for Reversible Computation →
Quantifies the memory cost of running computations reversibly and how to manage it.
Bennett, C. H. · SIAM J. Computing 18(4) · 1989
Foundations of Generalized Reversible Computing →
A modern framework broadening what counts as reversible computation and why it matters.
Frank, M. P. · RC 2017 (LNCS 10301) · 2017
Back to the Future: The Case for Reversible Computing →
An accessible argument that reversible computing is the way past the energy limits of conventional hardware.
Frank, M. P. · arXiv:1803.02789 · 2018
Experimental verification of Landauer's principle linking information and thermodynamics →
The first direct measurement of the heat released when a single bit is erased.
Bérut, A. et al. · Nature 483 · 2012
Where the field meets
Current research is gathered at the Reversible Computation (RC) conference series and the IEEE International Conference on Rebooting Computing (ICRC).