Remarkably close to the minimum permitted by physic: this superconducting memory bit runs at an estimated 5x the limit, but at - 269°C the fridge shrinks its claimed million-fold edge over today chips considerably

Hebrew University physicists estimate a single superconducting vortex can act as a memory bit at about five times Landauer's limit, at 4.2 kelvin Every time a computer erases a bit, it pays an energy toll that physics will not waive; IBM physicist Rolf Landauer pinned down the minimum in 1961: kT ln 2, a figure that scales with temperature and works out to about 2.9 zeptojoules at room temperature. No real chip comes close, making that gap a favorite target as computing's electricity bill keeps climbing. Physicists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem now say they have come within about five…