Spintronics and Reversible/Adiabatic Logic Based Ultralow Power Computing and Memory Units for Digital Signal Processing

Digital signal processing (DSP) has touched our daily life in many ways. The applications of DSP include digital photo cameras, MP3 players, digital television, mobile phones to automobiles and advanced medical imaging equipments. The growing expectations on DSP computing systems to provide increased services, faster data rates and higher processing speeds will in turn make them power hungry. Spin based signal processing devices could vastly increase speed and/or reduce power dissipation compared to traditional ‘charge based’ electronic devices. To achieve this goal, the PI will develop Spintronics (Nanomagnetic Logic-NML) and reversible/adiabatic logic based computing and memory units for digital signal processing applications that are ultra-low-power in nature. The proposed research has following objectives: (i) Investigate the implementation platform of Spintronics devices (Nanomagnetic Logic-NML) to implement ultra-low-power and radiation hardened computing units such as adder, multiplier, comparator and shifters. (ii) Investigate Spintronics devices to design ultra-low-power memory elements such as latches, flip-flops, registers, shift-registers, and random access memory (RAM). (iii) Investigate reversible and adiabatic computing paradigm to further minimize the power dissipation in Spintronics-based NML computing and memory units. (iv) Integrate the computing and memory units designed in Step (i)-(iii) to implement DSP functions such as Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT), Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), and Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter. The proposed research will advance computing education and research in following ways: (i) development of intellectual products and libraries for the ultra-low-power nanocomputing, (ii) educate students and researchers about the possible advantages and disadvantages of Spintronics based NML and reversible/adiabatic computing, and (iii) educate and mentor computer science, computer engineering and electrical engineering students about the post-cmos technologies and prepare them to do research in these areas, (iv) development of course material to be shared across the member Universities of SCEEE.