EAGER: Nano-Patterned Coupled Spin Torque Oscillator (STO) Arrays - a Potentially Disruptive Multipurpose Nanotechnology

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

As conventional CMOS technologies are running into multiple barriers that are likely to slow down or even stop Moore?s Law scaling sometime during the next decade, there is a need for new material discoveries and new nanodevice and circuit paradigms that allow new applications that would be impractical or even impossible using traditional methods. This work focuses on modeling, fabrication and applications for spin torque oscillators (STOs), with an emphasis on nano-arrays. Using multiferroic materials and an electric field, the team will tune both the frequency of a spin torque oscillator and also the coupling between adjacent STOs. This electric field will change the coercive field of the free layer which, in turn, will adjust the precessional frequency of the STO and the coupling between STOs. When presented with a continuous stream of real-time disparate data records that could come from different types of environmental and/or biological sensors an STO array can extract knowledge by analyzing the stream and providing a degree of match information about various data instances in the stream and their class membership. The associative memory capabilities of STO arrays are agnostic to the source of data, thus they can be used for computation and composition of data streams from hybrid sources working in different modes of operation. This special form of machine learning can be done in real time with no need for excessive local buffering of data. It can also accommodate concept drift as the underlying statistics used for data mining can easily be changed over time by controlling the inputs to the individual STOs. Such applications as real-time data stream mining as enabled by the proposed technology are critical to the safety and security of the country. The multidisciplinary activities exploit fundamental nanoelectronics and spintronics concepts through contributions in materials science, circuit design and novel nano-computing paradigms. The PIs have a strong track record of collaborating across disciplines and of involving their undergraduate and graduate students in these collaborative activities, and this project will enable further collaboration between material scientists, physicists, and electrical and computer engineers.