Science Daily May 8, 2019 A team of researchers in the US (New York University, University of Iowa) has developed a voltage-controlled topological spin switch (VTOPSS) that uses a hybrid topological insulator–magnetic insulator multiferroic material that can implement Boolean logic operations with sub-10-aJ energy per bit. They have developed the theory of its operation, analytic models of its performance metrics, elucidated performance scaling with dimensions and voltage, and benchmarked it against existing spin-based and CMOS devices. Compared with existing spin-based devices the VTOPSS offers 10–70 times lower energy dissipation and 70–1700 times lower energy-delay product. As it will reduce reliance […]
Tag Archives: Computing
The cost of computation
Science Daily April 8, 2019 An international team of researchers (USA – Arizona State University, Santa Fe Institute, Austria) reviews some of the recent work on the ‘stochastic thermodynamics of computation. After reviewing the salient parts of information theory, computer science theory, and stochastic thermodynamics, they summarize what has been learned about the entropic costs of performing a broad range of computations, extending from bit erasure to loop-free circuits to logically reversible circuits to information ratchets to Turing machines. These results reveal new, challenging engineering problems for how to design computers to have minimal thermodynamic costs. They also allow us […]
‘A Swiss cheese-like material’ that can solve equations
University of Pennsylvania March 21, 2019 Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have introduced a metamaterial platform capable of solving an arbitrary wave as the input function to an equation associated with a prescribed integral operator. The solution of such an equation is generated as a complex-valued output electromagnetic field. They demonstrated their technique at microwave frequencies through solving a generic integral equation and using a set of waveguides as the input and output to the designed metastructures. The research provides a route to develop chip-based analog optical computers and computing elements…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Excitons pave the way to more efficient electronics
Nanowerk January 4, 2019 An international team of researchers (Switzerland, Japan) combined tungsten diselenide with molybdenum diselenide to reveal new properties with an array of possible high-tech. By using a laser to generate light beams and slightly shifting the positions of the two 2D materials to create a moiré pattern, they were able to use excitons to change and regulate the polarization, wavelength and intensity of light. By manipulating the “valley,” of the exiciton, it can be leveraged to code and process information at a nanoscopic level. Linking several devices that incorporate this technology would give us a new way […]
New version of memory could power AI phones, smart devices
Nanowerk December 31, 2018 The new version of phase-change memory developed by an international team of researchers (Singapore, UK) reduces the switching time and allows memory cells to produce excellent stability. The manufacturing procedure uses a normal voltage pulse and requires no additional special materials. They reduced the switching time to 400 picoseconds by creating a single high amplitude voltage pulse and moderate duration to produce favorable atomic rearrangement in a material…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
A catalytic flying carpet
Nanowerk January 2, 2019 Catalyst-coated, hard particles can spontaneously generate fluid flows, which, in turn, propel the particles through the fluid. If it were a deformable sheet, then the self-generated flows could affect not only the sheet’s motion but also its shape. Researchers at Pittsburgh University developed models that capture the interrelated chemical, hydrodynamic, and mechanical interactions to uncover novel behavior emerging from the previously unstudied coupling between active, soft sheets and the surrounding fluid. The sheets can be tailored by modifying the sheet’s geometry, patterning the sheet’s surface with different catalysts, and using cascades of chemical reactions. The layers […]
An Amoeba Just Found an Entirely New Way to Solve a Classic Computing Problem
Science Alert December 21, 2018 An international team of researchers (China, Japan) used a unicellular plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum to search for a solution to the travelling salesman problem (TSP) by changing its shape to minimize the risk of being exposed to aversive light stimuli. They found that the time taken by plasmodium to find a reasonably high-quality TSP solution grows linearly as the problem size increases from four to eight. The quality of the solution does not degrade despite the explosive expansion of the search space. They formulated a computational model to show that the linear-time solution can be […]
Computational intelligence-inspired clustering in multi-access vehicular networks
Phys.org June 28, 2018 Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have attracted great interest for improving communications between vehicles using infrastructure-less wireless technologies. To overcome the shortcomings of the VANETs, an international team of researchers (Japan, Finland) has proposed a two-level clustering approach where cluster head nodes in the first level try to reduce the MAC layer contentions for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications, and cluster head nodes in the second level are responsible for providing a gateway functionality between V2V and LTE. Simulation results under various Network conditions show that the proposed protocol can achieve 23% throughput improvement in high-density scenarios compared […]
‘Breakthrough’ algorithm exponentially faster than any previous one
Eurekalert June 28, 2018 Traditionally algorithms for optimization problems narrow down the search space for the best solution one step at a time. In contrast, the new algorithm developed by researchers at Harvard University samples a variety of directions in parallel. Based on that sample, the algorithm discards low-value directions from its search space and chooses the most valuable directions to progress towards a solution. Using a data set of two million taxi trips from the New York City taxi and limousine commission, the adaptive-sampling algorithm found solutions 6 times faster. One of the biggest challenges in machine learning is […]
Researchers create world’s smallest ‘computer’
Tech Explore June 23, 2018 Researchers at the University of Michigan have created a device that measures just 0.3 mm to a side. It is designed as a precision temperature sensor that converts temperatures into time intervals, defined with electronic pulses. Microdevices, from IBM and now Michigan, lose all prior programming and data as soon as they lose power. In addition to the RAM and photovoltaics, the new computing devices have processors and wireless transmitters and receivers. Because they are too small to have conventional radio antennae, they receive and transmit data with visible light. A base station provides light […]