The Paradigm of Collective Computing

14th October 2020

Timing : 1 pm EST

For zoom link to the talks, please email mjgc@mit.edu with your institute email and mention affiliation


For a list of all talks at the NanoBio seminar Series 2020, see here


Many computationally hard problems, for example combinatorial optimization, can be mapped into the problem of finding the ground-state of an Ising Hamiltonian. Here, we present a continuous-time dynamical system (CTDS) approach where the ground-state solution appears as stable points or attractor states of the CTDS. In particular, we harness the emergent dynamics of a coupled network of electronic phase-transition nano-oscillators (PTNOs) to build an Ising Hamiltonian solver. The hardware fabric comprises capacitively coupled network of injection-locked stochastic PTNOs with bi-stable phases emulating artificial Ising spins. The experimental prototype can solve a benchmark non-deterministic polynomial time (NP)-hard graph partitioning problem called MaxCUT with high probability of success. Using experimentally calibrated numerical simulations, we investigate the scalability of the hardware. We find over five orders of magnitude improvement in energy efficiency when compared with fully digital, quantum and optical approaches. Such an energy efficient CTDS hardware will significantly benefit industrial planning and manufacturing, defense and cyber-security, bioinformatics and drug discovery, thereby ushering in a new era of collective computing.





Snow
Suman Datta
Stinson Professor of Nanotechnology
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Notre Dame

Suman Datta is the Stinson Chair Professor of Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. Prior to that, he was a Professor of Electrical Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, from 2007 to 2011. From 1999 till 2007, he was in the Advanced Transistor Group at Intel Corporation, Hillsboro, where he developed several generations of high-performance logic transistor technologies including high-k/metal gate, Tri-gate and non-silicon channel CMOS transistor technologies. His research group currently focuses on emerging device concepts that could enable new computational models. He is a recipient of the Intel Achievement Award (2003), the Intel Logic Technology Quality Award (2002), the Penn State Engineering Alumni Association (PSEAS) Outstanding Research Award (2012), the SEMI Award for North America (2012), IEEE Device Research Conference Best Paper Award (2010, 2011) and the PSEAS Premier Research Award (2015). He is a Fellow of IEEE and the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). He has published over 375 journal and refereed conference papers and holds 185 patents related to advanced device technologies. He is the Director of a multi-university advanced microelectronics research center, the ASCENT, funded by the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).