Communications of the ACM
Physicists to Develop New Way of Electronic Computing
Roland Kawakami is a professor of physics and astronomy at UC Riverside.
Credit: Courtesy of UCR Strategic Communications
University of California, Riverside researchers are developing a new way of computing designed to accelerate applications that process large amounts of data, such as Internet searching, data compression, and image recognition.
"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," says Riverside professor Roland Kawakami. "We are looking at a completely new architecture or framework for computing."
The researchers plan to build a magnetologic gate that will serve as the engine for the technology. The gate consists of graphene contacted by several magnetic electrodes, with the data stored in the magnetic state of the electrodes. For the logic operations, electrons move through the graphene and use its spin state to compare the information held in the individual magnetic electrodes.
"Our team consists of experts in spintronics, magnetoresistive memory, theoretical physics, circuit design, and [complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor] integration, a technology for constructing integrated circuits," Kawakami says.
From UCR Newsroom
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