Designing in an Emerging Nano Technology: QCA
Quantum Cellular Automata (QCA) is a radically new device technology developed at Notre Dame, which performs computation not on electron flow but on Coulombic interactions of electrons trapped in quantum dots. Real devices have demonstrated computation, storage, and clocking, with molecular devices approaching reality. In addition, an exploration of how to design real systems with such logic have laid the groundwork for a Mead/Conway like approach for both circuit and microarchitectures at the nano level. Results include new CAD systems, layout and timing models, and a design for a QCA microprocessor which has the potential to be 1,000 times denser than the end of the CMOS road map. Ongoing work focuses on fault tolerance, dense-memory structures, and alternative computer architectures.
Materials to be available include posters (both real and virtual) summarizing both the technology and its applications, and the lessons learned in moving to a new technology. Booth presentations on several of these topics are planned. Several of the key faculty members and graduate students will be in attendance.