Prof. Giovanni Finocchio, University of Messina, Messina, Italy
High performance spintronic devices in radio-frequency technology and computing
In his Distinguished Lecturer presentation, Prof. Finnocchio presents recent advances achieved in the development of spintronic microwave detectors, oscillators and amplifiers based on magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs). He reviews the main applications of those devices for computing including the realization of Ising machines. The spintronic technology takes advantage of the manipulation of the electron spin together with its charge. This technology potentially combines important characteristics such as ultralow power needs, compactness (nanoscale size) and it is CMOS-compatible. Spintronics has different success stories such as the head read for magnetic hard drive and the recent spin-transfer-torque magnetic random access memories. The latter are realized with MTJs which are devices composed by two ferromagnets separated by a ultrathin isolating material. The resistance of this device depends on the relative orientation of the magnetization of the two ferromagnets and in particular the configuration where the magnetization are parallel or antiparallel can code the binary information. Together with memory developments, which are already in the market and integrated within the CMOS processes by main foundries (INTEL, SAMSUNG, GlobalFoundries), MTJs can be used for the development of auto-oscillators and very high efficient detectors. He shows applications of spintronic diodes based on MTJs for energy harvesting, sensors and RF detectors and what it is expected to achieve in the next three years for integration with CMOS-technology. The latter part of the talk will focuses on probabilistic computing which is one direction to implement Ising Machines. Probabilistic computing is a computational paradigm using probabilistic bits (p-bits), unit in the middle between standard bit and q-bits. I will show how to map hard combinatorial optimization problems (Max-Sat, Max-Cut, etc) into Ising machine and how to implement those in spintronic technology.
