Time: Wednesday, October 10th, 15:30
Speaker: Philipp PIRRO, TU Kaiserslautern
Today’s computational technology based on CMOS has experienced enormous scaling of data processing capability as well as of price and energy consumption per logic element. However, to continue this development successfully into the future, and with the rapid development of artificial intelligence and neural networks in mind, complementary approaches to conventional logic schemes are needed. One of these alternative routes is wave-based computing, which, however, suffered longtime from the lack of a down-scalable system which could be interconnected with conventional CMOS technology. In this context, spin waves, the elementary excitations of the spin system and their quanta, the magnons, have been intensively investigated and successfully brought to the micro- and nanoscale. Also, the connections to conventional electronic and spintronics circuits have been established within a new field known as magnon spintronics. Due to their large variety of intrinsic linear and nonlinear wave phenomena, spin waves constitute a promising candidate for nanoscaled wave-based computing and data processing in general.
We will first discuss the different computing approaches based on (spin-) waves and the advantages and challenges of an interference-based logic. Then, we present a selection of experimentally realized (macroscopic) prototypes for spin-wave based Boolean logic like the majority gate and the magnon transistor. To show the potential of advanced nanoscopic devices, micromagnetic simulations demonstrating the working principles of integrated magnonic circuits are presented. Inspired by the hybrid analog and digital data processing structure of biological brains, we use the unique properties of these circuits to develop an approach to realize neuromorphic computing based on spin waves.