Startup Vaire Set to Release First Reversible Computing Chip Within a Year

The company's self-declared mission is to use reversible computing to create near zero-energy chips for generative AI and always-on edge devices.

The seed round funders include Tom Knight, founder of Ginkgo Bioworks and the inventor of modern reversible computing, Vaire said in a statement. The company had previously raised US$500,000, bringing its total funding to date to US$4.5 million.

The company was founded in 2021 by serial entrepreneur Rodolfo Rosini and Hannah Earley, a reversible computing researcher from the University of Cambridge. Rosini serves as the CEO and Earley is the CTO of the company. Vaire recently recruited Andrew Sloss, who ended his 25 years at processor IP licensor Arm as a senior principal research engineer.

In addition to securing seed funding, Vaire Computing has hired Mike Frank, a leading researcher in reversible computing, as a senior scientist.

Reversible computing is a model of computation where the process is, to some extent, time-reversible. It is an alternative to classical computing that performs calculations while generating a relatively negligible amount of heat, thereby reducing energy consumption and the need for cooling.

The concept is related to adiabatic computing, thermodynamics, and information theory. Academic interest in reversible computing has grown because it offers a potential way to improve computational energy efficiency beyond the von Neumann–Landauer limit, which is the theoretical minimum amount of energy required to erase one bit of information.

"Vaire Computing's near zero-energy chips promise advanced AI at a fraction of the energy cost with an architecture that can scale for decades," said Rosini in a statement. "We are excited about this next phase of our company's development and look forward to delivering our first chip in the next twelve months."

The seed funding will be used to hire engineers and fast track the company's first prototype chip, the company said.

"Improving energy consumption and performance in chips by an order of magnitude unlocks vast revenue potential, as the [annual] GPU market alone is set to be US$400 billion within five years," said Andrew Scott, founding partner of lead investor 7percent Ventures, in the statement issued by Vaire. "Vaire Computing is different because its technology is innovative at a foundational level, positioning the company extraordinarily well to capture a huge chunk of the future AI chip, and ultimately, computer processor market," he added.

However, for now, it remains unclear what material system Vaire will use to implement its reversible computing. Earley's academic research has included the study of state-change within molecular and DNA computing systems. Molecular programming uses alterable chemical systems for computation. Earley's 2023 paper on Reversible Bond Logic (RBL) applies reversibility and reversible computing to molecular programming.

Given the relatively small amount of funding announced so far, it must be expected that Vaire's prototype first "chip" will be a simple "proof-of-concept" device that is used to persuade investors to join in with a series of much more substantial funding rounds.

www.vaire.co

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