[HN Gopher] Magnon-based computation could signal computing para...
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Magnon-based computation could signal computing paradigm shift
Author : isaacfrond
Score : 78 points
Date : 2023-04-01 12:01 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| amelius wrote:
| I'm still waiting for phononic computing to become a thing.
| (Note: phononic, not photonic).
|
| https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4919584
| javajosh wrote:
| Life is too short to read articles titled "x-based y could signal
| z paradigm shift" from phys.org.
| kalimanzaro wrote:
| Regrettable that academia didnt learn from industry how to
| deploy, only how to spin. When everything is framed as an
| "investment", researchers aren't incentivized to discover but
| to squeeze out "returns" even when there arent much
| mjburgess wrote:
| Perhaps, more precisely, it's a shame that governments turned
| research funding into a private sector game like start-up
| funding.
|
| It seems no mystery why western governments are saying insane
| things like they need to be competitive in the quantum
| computing space: their frontal-lobes (the research industry)
| has been hijacked by the hype machines formerly constrained
| to the private sector.
| cycomanic wrote:
| This really it's the nail on the head and it has other
| consequences.
|
| I was talking with a colleague about how it is to lead a
| research group and essentially it is very much like running
| a start up always in the phase of trying to attract funding
| without the prospect of things ever becoming self
| sustainable and there being a great monetary reward.
| gumby wrote:
| > Regrettable that academia didnt learn from industry how to
| deploy, only how to spin.
|
| Hey, this was from phys.org and spin matters a lot to certain
| physicists!
|
| More seriously: with funding being less prevalent and the
| cultural shift to the dominance of commerce-worshipping
| Gradgrinds, university press offices and even individual
| professors are under a lot of pressure to point out the
| practicality (which today means "marketability") of
| everything, even an abstract mathematical proof!
|
| I can't count how many academic presentations I've heard that
| ended with 15-20 minutes with the author trying to justify
| the work. They are professors, not business people, and they
| almost always sound like they are struggling to jump through
| that hoop. The time would have better been spent talking
| further about the actual subject matter!
| Animats wrote:
| This is so bad it's not even clear what they are spinning. Is
| this a memory device? A compute element? What?
|
| Physicists have been fooling around with yttrium iron garnet
| for decades.[1][2] It apparently has really weird
| interactions between photons and magnetic fields. That's
| promising, because semiconductors came from studying weird
| interactions between electric charge and current flow in
| unusual solid materials. Yttrium iron garnet been tried
| experimentally for microwave phase-shifters and beam-forming
| antennas, but doesn't seem to have appeared in products yet.
|
| So, decades of papers, but no products yet. There's real
| physics there, but the hype is overblown. Probably because
| someone needs funding and grad students to work in this
| obscure area.
|
| [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/physics-and-
| astronomy/y...
|
| [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41535-017-0067-y.pdf
| duckqlz wrote:
| So if I am understanding correctly this YIG-nanomagnet device
| expands on the work of spin-wave computation in a hybrid CMOS
| setting and allows for read and write which would allow in memory
| computation? How does a YIG-nanomagnet work? Does it hold its
| state after a charge is applied or does it need a constant
| amplitude to keep it in either a 0 or 1 state? I find this very
| interesting and would love to read more about the work.
| martinclayton wrote:
| Shoehorned in a mention of AI...
|
| Did I understand this right: they can do 0 to 1, but haven't
| figured out 1 to 0 yet?
|
| That's a big "could".
|
| I don't like the tag links the site inserts in to the text. If
| you follow one, you generate a nice extra hit on the site, but I
| struggle to see the value.
| ixtli wrote:
| it's an ad for their lab and research. that was clear to me
| before I clicked the link. I didn't know anything about
| magnetic approaches to this tho so I appreciate the overview
| tbh
| formerly_proven wrote:
| This is an alt name for spin wave conputing.
| peter_d_sherman wrote:
| >"Nanomagnet reversal happened only when the spin wave hit a
| certain amplitude, and could then be used to write and read
| data."
|
| Reminds me of Mr. Spock (being tested by an automated AI test
| administrator) in "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home", when the AI
| asks the following question:
|
| _" Adjust the sine wave of this magnetic envelope so that anti-
| neutrons can pass through it but anti-gravitons can not..."_
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2ooUXjNPS8&t=51s
|
| (A classic line, still to this day! <g>)
| bradhe wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember when the memristor was going to signal
| a computing paradigm shift.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Memristors are inherently not practical, and there were plenty
| of people pointing this at the time.
|
| Magnetronics are an open question, nobody really knows how
| useful it can be. (But they have more promise for energy
| efficiency than miniaturization and cost-cutting.)
| jiggawatts wrote:
| > Memristors are inherently not practical
|
| There were practical products based on it, shipped in volume!
|
| What do you mean they were "inherently" not practical?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Diffusion based products have a minimum size that prevents
| they being used anywhere where they could be useful.
|
| What practical products did you see?
| Twirrim wrote:
| HP still knocks the dust off that one every few years, touts
| their major achievements towards it each time, and implies it's
| only a couple of years until it'll hit the market.
|
| It has been a few years, which means we're probably close to
| the next round of articles.
| monocasa wrote:
| I heard a rumour that they sold of the IP rights piecemeal to
| so many different entities that it's nearly impossible to
| actually legally use the technology in a product anymore.
| imglorp wrote:
| Isn't there a little law of thermodynamics here about doing work
| and dissipating energy?
| User23 wrote:
| Reversible computers avoid this by producing arbitrarily little
| entropy
| Aardwolf wrote:
| How do you deal with all the output "garbage" signals that
| reversible computing produces? Do they all get sent
| somewhere, and the place where they get sent to discards them
| but heats up?
| User23 wrote:
| From my recollection of the Feynman lectures on the
| subject, basically yes. Nevertheless the overall
| theoretical efficiency is still considerably higher than an
| irreversible machine.
|
| It's not an area where I've followed the subsequent
| research though. I'd be delighted if someone who knows more
| chimed in. There are also some obvious advantages for being
| able to choose precisely when you do a reset and generate
| your waste heat.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Being able to choose where you want do dissipate heat would
| be a game changer in itself
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The garbage output signals get recycled indefinitely. Only
| the useful output ever needs to generate heat.
|
| It was thought for some time that they needed be turned to
| heat, but that's actually untrue. Using quantum gates, it
| is possible to do an arbitrary classical computation and
| recycle the anciliary bits.
| akjssdk wrote:
| To be clear, there is some dissipation with magnons, just a lot
| less than Joule heating. But exciting a magnon will heat up
| your sample, because magnons don't live forever and decay after
| some time. That energy has to go somewhere.
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