Fredkin gate

The Fredkin gate is a computational circuit suitable for reversible computing, invented by Ed Fredkin. It is universal, which means that any logical or arithmetic operation can be constructed entirely of Fredkin gates.

The basic Fredkin gate[1] is a controlled swap gate that maps three inputs (C, I1, I2) onto three outputs (C, O1, O2). The C input is mapped directly to the C output. If C = 0, no swap is performed; I1 maps to O1, and I2 maps to O2. Otherwise, the two outputs are swapped so that I1 maps to O2, and I2 maps to O1. It is easy to see that this circuit is reversible, i.e., "undoes itself" when run backwards. A generalized n×n Fredkin gate passes its first n-2 inputs unchanged to the corresponding outputs, and swaps its last two outputs if and only if the first n-2 inputs are all 1.


The Fredkin gate is the reversible 3-bit gate that swaps the last two bits if the first bit is 1