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Talk about a monumental task. Roland Kawakami, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Riverside, is leading a team of physicists on a multicampus research project aimed at replacing conventional silicon electronics with a new way of computing better equipped to process large scale applications. The team's budget is $1.85 million.
That's the amount of grant money it received, according to UC Riverside. It was awarded to UC Riverside for winning the national Nanoelectronics for 2020 and Beyond competition.
Kawakami says his team is looking at ways of improving computing that go beyond simply building a better transistor. He believes conventional silicon electronics can only go so far and it won't be long before the technology hits a wall. Then what?
"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," Kawakami explains.
It starts with developing a new type of building block device called a magnetologic gate (pictured above). This will serve as the basis for the technology, much in the same way transistors are the backbone of conventional electronics. The magnetic gate is made of graphene with a bunch of magnetic electrodes. These electrodes store data, while electrons move through the graphene to use the spin state to compare the information, according to UC Riverside.
More geeky details on the topic here.
Comments are closed on this article
Mortal_M
October 05, 2011 at 5:28pm
I like the idea, way too many stuff today is still based on such old technology and you see everyone trying to nerf the same stuff and not too many looking for a different alternative.
The Blu-ray disc for instance, it's the same old system of a circle shaped object spining and a neddle reading the data. (it's just an example, don't kill me :P)
jedisamurai
October 05, 2011 at 4:34pm
The government spends more money on holiday celebrations than on that. Heck that wouldn't pay NASA's water bill. The military spends more on one mission. And Google spends more than that on a single advertisement.
thetechchild
October 05, 2011 at 10:07pm
It's also more than 80% of what the average US citizen makes in a lifetime in a single shot, if I remember correctly.
It's true that they're not getting much, but it's definitely a start. If the research turns out to have interesting results, then they'll probably get much more (or perhaps be able to find a private sector sponsor).
bpstone
October 05, 2011 at 1:30pm
$1.85 million is not a lot of money. At least it is a step in the right direction.
LatiosXT
October 06, 2011 at 8:01am
It's typical of the government to give this amount in grants to technology that's in the R&D phase. They don't really care if it makes a breakthrough or not in the near future. But when the time comes that it finally does make a breakthrough, the government can't say they weren't funding it.
