As Moore?s Law grinds to a halt, we are entering a new world of software driven hardware, of ASICs and machine learning accelerators. This has opened up new opportunities for novel low-power electronics and emerging materials underpinning them. While quantum computing can end up being disruptive in algorithmic scale-up, there are many opportunities for classical computing with topological quantum states based on present day technology that can be quite disruptive as well. There are two examples I will focus on ? one is doing conventional Boolean logic at low power below the thermal Boltzmann limit, using the topological properties of Dirac fermions to control transmission across a gated interface. The other is doing collective computing using temporal state machines to solve certain graph theory problems efficiently. An example 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 ? topology driven lifetime and topology driven transmission, can be used to accomplish entirely different goals in low-power computing.

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 Multifunctional Integrated Systems Technology (MIST). Ghosh has authored 125+ refereed papers and a book (?Nanoelectronics ? a Molecular View?, World Scientific) in the area of computational nano-materials and devices. He has given over 125 invited lectures worldwide. He is Fellow of the Institute of Physics (IOP), senior member of the IEEE, and has received the IBM Faculty Award, the NSF CAREER Award, a 2006 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.

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Avik Ghosh (2021), "Classical Computing with Topological States: Coping with a post-Moore World," https://nanohub.org/resources/35169.

  BibTex | EndNote

1. boltzmann limit
2. Dirac fermions
3. Fermions
4. low power computing
5. machine learning
6. magnets/magnetics
7. Moore's law
8. quantum computing
9. quantum states
10. Skyrmions
11. spintronics
12. topological materials and matter