This paper provides a tutorial overview over recent vigorous efforts to develop computing systems based on spin waves instead of charges and voltages. Spin-wave computing can be considered a subfield of spintronics, which uses magnetic excitations for computation and memory applications. The Tutorial combines backgrounds in spin-wave and device physics as well as circuit engineering to create synergies between the physics and electrical engineering communities to advance the field toward practical spin-wave circuits. After an introduction to magnetic interactions and spin-wave physics, the basic aspects of spin-wave computing and individual spin-wave devices are reviewed. The focus is on spin-wave majority gates as they are the most prominently pursued device concept. Subsequently, we discuss the current status and the challenges to combine spin-wave gates and obtain circuits and ultimately computing systems, considering essential aspects such as gate interconnection, logic level restoration, input-output consistency, and fan-out achievement. We argue that spin-wave circuits need to be embedded in conventional complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) circuits to obtain complete functional hybrid computing systems. The state of the art of benchmarking such hybrid spin-wave-CMOS systems is reviewed, and the current challenges to realize such systems are discussed. The benchmark indicates that hybrid spin-wave-CMOS systems promise ultralow-power operation and may ultimately outperform conventional CMOS circuits in terms of the power-delay-area product. Current challenges to achieve this goal include low-power signal restoration in spin-wave circuits as well as efficient spin-wave transducers.
Magnonics addresses the physical properties of spin waves and utilizes them for data processing. Scalability down to atomic dimensions, operation in the GHz-to-THz frequency range, utilization of nonlinear and nonreciprocal phenomena, and compatibility with CMOS are just a few of many advantages offered by magnons. Although magnonics is still primarily positioned in the academic domain, the scientific and technological challenges of the field are being extensively investigated, and many proof-of-concept prototypes have already been realized in laboratories. This roadmap is a product of the collective work of many authors that covers versatile spin-wave computing approaches, conceptual building blocks, and underlying physical phenomena. In particular, the roadmap discusses the computation operations with Boolean digital data, unconventional approaches like neuromorphic computing, and the progress towards magnon-based quantum computing. The article is organized as a collection of sub-sections grouped into seven large thematic sections. Each sub-section is prepared by one or a group of authors and concludes with a brief description of current challenges and the outlook of further development for each research direction.
By its very nature, Spin Wave (SW) interference provides intrinsic support for Majority logic function evaluation. Due to this and the fact that the 3-input Majority (MAJ3) gate and the inverter constitute a universal Boolean logic gate set, different MAJ3 gate implementations have been proposed. However, they cannot be directly utilized for the construction of larger SW logic circuits as they lack a key cascading mechanism, i.e., fanout capability. In this paper, we introduce a novel ladder-shaped SW MAJ3 gate design able to provide a maximum fanout of 2 (FO2). The proper gate functionality is validated by means of micromagnetic simulations, which also demonstrate that the amplitude mismatch between the two outputs is negligible, proving that an FO2 is properly achieved. Additionally, we evaluate the gate area and compare it with SW state-of-the-art and 15 nm CMOS counterparts working under the same conditions. Our results indicate that the proposed structure requires a 12× less area than the 15 nm CMOS MAJ3 gate and that at the gate level, the fanout capability results in 16% area savings, when compared to the state-of-the-art SW majority gate counterparts.
The key enabling factor for Spin Wave (SW) technology utilization for building ultra low power circuits is the ability to energy efficiently cascade SW basic computation blocks. SW Majority gates, which constitute a universal gate set for this paradigm, operating on phase encoded data are not input output coherent in terms of SW amplitude, and as such, their cascading requires information representation conversion from SW to voltage and back, which is by no means energy effective. In this paper, a novel conversion free SW gate cascading scheme is proposed that achieves SW
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