Information battery

An information battery refers to the "storage" of surplus energy in the form of information (such as intermediate results of computation) that can be used later to lessen the need for computation.

The concept was introduced in the context of ?supercomputing, but it has also been discussed in the context of ?degrowth computing in 2022. It mirrors the permacomputing idea of using surplus energy for slow, computing-intensive tasks.

The concept emphasizes the storage of rather temporary information on a rather short-term basis. An example of a more long-term use of surplus energy for more permanent results would be the gradual optimization of software: when initially compiling a program, the compiler would only do rather lightweight optimizations, and the heavier and more computing-intensive ones would be postponed to times of abundance.