Spin-wave research paves way for super-fast circuits
US scientist have announced "a critical new breakthrough" in semiconductor spin-wave research that promises to pave the way for next-generation fast nano-scale transistors.
UCLA Engineering Adjunct Professor Mary Mehrnoosh Eshaghian-Wilner, researcher Alexander Khitun and Professor Kang Wang have created three nano-scale computational architectures using a technology called "spin-wave buses" as the mechanism for interconnection.
The researchers explained that three nano-scale architectures are not only power efficient, but possess a high degree of interconnectivity.
"Progress in the miniaturisation of semiconductor electronic devices has meant that chip features have become nano-scale," said Professor Wang.
"Today's current devices, which are based on complementary metal oxide semiconductor [CMOS] standards, cannot get much smaller and still function properly and effectively. CMOS continues to face increasing power and cost challenges."
Professor Wang explained that, in contrast to traditional information processing technology devices that simply move electric charges around while ignoring the extra spin that tags along for the ride, spin-wave buses put the extra motion to work transferring data or power between computer components.
Information is encoded directly into the phase of the spin waves. Unlike a point-to-point connection, a 'bus' can logically connect several peripherals.
The result is a reduction in power consumption, less heat and, ultimately, the ability to make components much smaller as no physical wires are used to send the data.
"The design of nano-scale architectures for computing is a very new area, but an important one for the future," said Professor Eshaghian-Wilner.
"In order to produce effective nano-scale devices, we need to actively look at new low power designs that can have efficient interconnectivity and allow scaling beyond current barriers."
The idea of using spin waves for information transmission and processing was first developed under the name "spin-wave buses" by Khitun, Professor Wang and graduate researcher Roman Ostroumov.
"We have made a significant effort to demonstrate the operation of spin-based devices at room temperature," said Khitun.
"Our experimental results confirm the intriguing fact that information can be transmitted via spin waves propagating in spin waveguides, or ferromagnetic films."
The team argues that the creation and detection of spin-wave packets in nanostructures can be used efficiently to perform massively parallel computational operations, allowing for the design of the first practical, fully interconnected network of processors on a single chip.
This breaks with currently proposed 'spintronic' architectures, which rely on a charge transfer for information exchange and show significant interconnect problems.
Professor Eshaghian-Wilner, in conjunction with Khitun and Professor Wang, has developed three spin-wave bus-based designs that use spin waves to achieve the low-power device performance and improved scalability highly desired by industry chip manufacturers.
The first device developed by UCLA engineers is a reconfigurable mesh interconnected with spin-wave buses.
The architecture of the device requires the same number of switches and buses as standard reconfigurable meshes, but is capable of simultaneously transmitting multiple waves using different frequencies on each of the spin-wave buses, making the parallel architecture capable of very fast and fault-tolerant algorithms.
"This innovative design represents an original approach for nano-scale computational devices while preserving all the advantages of wave-based computing," said Professor Eshaghian-Wilner.
"We are tremendously excited about the future of this research. The designs demonstrate outstanding performance as interconnects for massively parallel integrated circuits."
Khitun added: "Over the past few years, scientists have studied a variety of methods for designing nano-scale computer architectures. Our collaborative approach using spin-wave buses is a novel one that we hope will lead to additional breakthroughs."
US scientist have announced "a critical new breakthrough" in semiconductor spin-wave research that promises to pave the way for next-generation fast nano-scale transistors.
UCLA Engineering Adjunct Professor Mary Mehrnoosh Eshaghian-Wilner, researcher Alexander Khitun and Professor Kang Wang have created three nano-scale computational architectures using a technology called "spin-wave buses" as the mechanism for interconnection.
The researchers explained that three nano-scale architectures are not only power efficient, but possess a high degree of interconnectivity.
"Progress in the miniaturisation of semiconductor electronic devices has meant that chip features have become nano-scale," said Professor Wang.
"Today's current devices, which are based on complementary metal oxide semiconductor [CMOS] standards, cannot get much smaller and still function properly and effectively. CMOS continues to face increasing power and cost challenges."
Professor Wang explained that, in contrast to traditional information processing technology devices that simply move electric charges around while ignoring the extra spin that tags along for the ride, spin-wave buses put the extra motion to work transferring data or power between computer components.
Information is encoded directly into the phase of the spin waves. Unlike a point-to-point connection, a 'bus' can logically connect several peripherals.
The result is a reduction in power consumption, less heat and, ultimately, the ability to make components much smaller as no physical wires are used to send the data.
"The design of nano-scale architectures for computing is a very new area, but an important one for the future," said Professor Eshaghian-Wilner.
"In order to produce effective nano-scale devices, we need to actively look at new low power designs that can have efficient interconnectivity and allow scaling beyond current barriers."
The idea of using spin waves for information transmission and processing was first developed under the name "spin-wave buses" by Khitun, Professor Wang and graduate researcher Roman Ostroumov.
"We have made a significant effort to demonstrate the operation of spin-based devices at room temperature," said Khitun.
"Our experimental results confirm the intriguing fact that information can be transmitted via spin waves propagating in spin waveguides, or ferromagnetic films."
The team argues that the creation and detection of spin-wave packets in nanostructures can be used efficiently to perform massively parallel computational operations, allowing for the design of the first practical, fully interconnected network of processors on a single chip.
This breaks with currently proposed 'spintronic' architectures, which rely on a charge transfer for information exchange and show significant interconnect problems.
Professor Eshaghian-Wilner, in conjunction with Khitun and Professor Wang, has developed three spin-wave bus-based designs that use spin waves to achieve the low-power device performance and improved scalability highly desired by industry chip manufacturers.
The first device developed by UCLA engineers is a reconfigurable mesh interconnected with spin-wave buses.
The architecture of the device requires the same number of switches and buses as standard reconfigurable meshes, but is capable of simultaneously transmitting multiple waves using different frequencies on each of the spin-wave buses, making the parallel architecture capable of very fast and fault-tolerant algorithms.
"This innovative design represents an original approach for nano-scale computational devices while preserving all the advantages of wave-based computing," said Professor Eshaghian-Wilner.
"We are tremendously excited about the future of this research. The designs demonstrate outstanding performance as interconnects for massively parallel integrated circuits."
Khitun added: "Over the past few years, scientists have studied a variety of methods for designing nano-scale computer architectures. Our collaborative approach using spin-wave buses is a novel one that we hope will lead to additional breakthroughs."
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