The University of California, Riverside has received a $1.85 million grant to develop a new way of computing that is beyond the scope of conventional silicon electronics.
The goal of the project is to speed up applications that process large amounts of data such as internet searching, data compression, and image recognition.
The money is awarded to UC Riverside under the nationwide "Nanoelectronics for 2020 and Beyond" competition sponsored by the National Science Foundation? and the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative.
"Conventional silicon electronics will soon face its ultimate limits," said Roland Kawakami, a professor of physics and astronomy and the four-year grant's principal investigator. "Our approach is to utilize the spin degree of freedom to store and process information, which will allow the functions of logic and memory to be fully integrated into a single chip."
Spin is a fundamental characteristic property of electrons which causes them to behave as tiny magnets with a "north" and "south" pole. Electrons can occupy different spin states corresponding to different orientations for the magnetic poles. For spin-based computing, data is held in the spin state of the electron.
Kawakami explained that unlike more traditional approaches to improve electronics by building a better transistor, the current project has a far more transformative approach.
"We are looking at a completely new architecture or framework for computing," he said. "This involves developing a new type of 'building-block' device known as a magnetologic gate that will serve as the engine for this technology – similar to the role of the transistor in conventional electronics. In addition, we will develop and design the circuits needed to utilize this device for specific functions, such as searching, sorting, and forecasting."
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