In both cases, the nomenclature is used to indicate that these systems are capable of operating with substantially less power dissipation than traditional static CMOS circuits.
The first usage of the term "adiabatic" in the context of circuitry appears to be traceable back to a paper presented in 1992 at the Second Workshop on Physics and Computation.
To achieve this, in general, the power supplies of adiabatic logic circuits have used constant current charging (or an approximation thereto), in contrast to more traditional non-adiabatic systems that have generally used constant voltage charging from a fixed-voltage power supply.
Quasi-adiabatic stepwise charging avoids inductors entirely by storing recovered energy in capacitors.
However, most research has focused on building adiabatic logic, which is a promising design for low power applications.
Adiabatic logic works with the concept of switching activities which reduces the power by giving stored energy back to the supply.
In this, the main design changes are focused in power clock which plays the vital role in the principle of operation.