Comment by zozbot234
1 year ago
The interesting question is how much energy is lost to mechanical friction for a single logic operation, and how this compares to static leakage losses in electronic circuits. It should also be noted that mechanical logic may turn out to be quite useful for specialized purposes as part of ordinary electronic devices, such as using nano-relay switches for power gating or as a kind of non-volatile memory.
That's one of many interesting questions, but avoiding it is why Merkle designed his reversible logic families in such a way that no mechanical friction is involved, because there is no sliding contact. There are still potentially other kinds of losses, though.