Adiabatic circuits are low power

Low-power electronics

Low-power electronics means that the consumption of electric power is deliberately low, e.g. notebook processors.- Computing elements :The density and speed of integrated-circuit computing elements have increased exponentially for several decades, following a trend described by Moore's Law...

 circuits which use "reversible logic" to conserve energy. Unlike traditional CMOS

CMOS

Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor is a technology for constructing integrated circuits. CMOS technology is used in microprocessors, microcontrollers, static RAM, and other digital logic circuits...

 circuits, which dissipate energy during switching, adiabatic circuits attempt to conserve charge by following two key rules:

1. Never turn on a transistor when there is a voltage potential between the source and drain.
2. Never turn off a transistor when current is flowing through it.

While this is an area of active research, current techniques rely heavily on transmission gates and trapezoidal clocks to achieve these goals.

See also

Reversible computing

Reversible computing

Reversible computing is a model of computing where the computational process to some extent is reversible, i.e., time-invertible. A necessary condition for reversibility of a computational model is that the transition function mapping states to their successors at a given later time should be...

Asymptotically Zero Energy Computing Using Split-Level Charge Recovery Logic