Navigation

Features

Magnetic Attraction

Dmitir Litvinov Just as compact discs all but wiped out vinyl records, semiconductors could be on their way out, too. Partnering with researchers from Seagate Technology—a major U.S. manufacturer of hard drives and the largest magnetic information technology company in the world—and the University of California-Riverside, UH’s Dmitri Litvinov, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and of chemical and biomolecular engineering, is working with magnetic cellular networks to replace conventional circuitry to improve computing operations. This research could yield higher computing power beyond what is achievable with semiconductor integrated circuits as well as potential integration with magnetic random access memory—resulting in all-magnetic computing and extreme resilience against radiation, which is critical for space missions or military applications. The long-term potential of developing integrated magnetic computing systems like this could foster an advance in information processing that rivals not just superconductors, but the integrated circuit revolution of the past half century as well.