Spintronics, Magnons as an Alternative to Silicon and a Competitor to Quantum Computing
The Future of Computing could be Magnetic
Excerpts and salient points ~
+ The significant breakthrough made by the MIT team is the development of a circuit architecture that does away with the need for bulky components used to inject electrical currents. This is an advantage as such components can cause signal noise, thus reducing performance.
Spin waves are ripples of energy with small wavelengths, the collective spins of many electrons are called magnons. Although these magnons are not true particles they can be measured in a similar way to electrons to be used in computing applications.
+ The team negated the need for such components by developing a nanometer-wide magnetic domain wall in layered nanofilms of magnetic material to modulate a passing spin-wave, with no need for any extra components or electrical current. In turn, the spin-wave can be tuned to control the location and width of this domain as needed, giving precise control of two changing spin-wave states. These spin states corresponding to the 1s and 0s used in classical computing.
+ Future applications of these spin-waves could see pairs fed into a circuit through dual-channels. Each member of this pair could be modulated for different properties — combining to generate measurable quantum interference. This is analogous to the use of photon-wave interference in quantum computing… As such, the researchers suggest that such spintronics based devices relying on interference could, in theory, match quantum computers in terms of raw computing power, executing complex tasks that conventional computers struggle with.
Source: M The Startup. Robert Lea, The Future of Computing could be Magnetic…
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