ECE Seminar: "Classical Computing with Topological States: Coping with a Post-Moore World"

ABSTRACT

As hardware scaling based on Moore's Law grinds to a halt, we find ourselves in a new world of software driven hardware, of ASICsand machine learning accelerators. This has opened up opportunities for low-power computing that might be able to capitalize onunique attributes of emerging materials. Quantum computing is thought to be disruptive in algorithmic scale-up, perhaps in the verylong term. However there are opportunities for classical computing with quantum states based on present day technology that can bequite disruptive as well. There are two examples I will focus on - one is doing conventional Boolean logic at low power below thethermal Boltzmann limit, such as by exploiting symmetry restrictions of Dirac fermions across a gated 2-D material interface. The other example is doing collective computing using temporal state machines to solve certain graph optimization problems efficiently. Anexample is skyrmions driven along racetracks, whose quasi-linear operation and topologically stabilized lifetimes at ultra-small sizes can potentially function as temporal memory in race logic for rapid pattern matching and intermittent-sensor processing applications.These two concepts - topologically gated transmission and topologically stabilized lifetime can be used to accomplish entirely different goals in low-power computing.

BIOGRAPHY

Avik Ghosh is Professor at the Charles Brown Dept of Electrical and Computing Engineering and the Dept of Physics at the University of Virginia. He did his PhD in condensed matter theory at the Ohio State University, and a postdoctoral fellowship in Electrical Engineering at Purdue University. He is the UVA site-director of the NSF-Industry University Cooperative Center on MultifunctionalIntegrated Systems Technology (MIST). Ghosh has authored 150+ refereed papers and a book ("Nanoelectronics - a Molecular View",World Scientific 2016) in the area of computational nano-materials and devices. He has given over 150 invited lectures worldwide. Heis Fellow of the Institute of Physics (IOP), senior member of the IEEE, and has received the IBM Faculty Award, the NSF CAREER Award, a best paper award from the Army Research Office, and UVA's All University Teaching Award.

His group's work with Columbia University on negative index behavior in graphene was voted by the editors of Physics World as one of the top10 research breakthroughs of 2016.