N1005 IBM Research: zurich

Meet an IBM Researcher: Cristiano Malossi

<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4ZiiurFG56EsbeHYQnKH-_0WBv3g2o7NmW_jdT2WD1zeTKObNQKDRpw8JGXxbW8HFh5urkD85P4rrYOvKizHBWlvJJ8bXPnvpcJ6k0pVOFFfU61jArgRIJHo6Mpt2ULziTHHBP6IKxv4/s1600/L1001587.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4ZiiurFG56EsbeHYQnKH-_0WBv3g2o7NmW_jdT2WD1zeTKObNQKDRpw8JGXxbW8HFh5urkD85P4rrYOvKizHBWlvJJ8bXPnvpcJ6k0pVOFFfU61jArgRIJHo6Mpt2ULziTHHBP6IKxv4/s320/L1001587.jpg" width="232" /></a></div><span style="font-size: large;">Name: <a href="http://researcher.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=zurich-ACM">Cristiano Malossi</a></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Location: IBM Research - Zurich</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Nationality: Italian</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Focus:  High Performance Computing</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 2013 Cristiano Malossi received the <a href="http://actu.epfl.ch/news/ibm-research-award-malossi-adelmo-cristiano-innoce/" target="_blank">IBM Research Prize</a> for his doctoral thesis on simulating the human cardiovascular system under either physiological or pathological conditions. While he probably didn't know it at the time, IBM already had big plans for his career, initially offering him a post-doctoral position at IBM's lab in Zurich shortly after.</span><br /><a name="more"></a></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">A little more than two years later he has made an impact on several client projects. And due, in part, to this success, he has recently received a position on <a href="http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=zurich-bek">Costas Bekas</a>' <a href="http://www.research.ibm.com/cognitive-computing/#fbid=dNtkM5YBiIS">Foundations of Cognitive Solutions</a> team.</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">As if that wasn't already worth celebrating, Cristiano is also counting down the days to November 19 when this year's <a href="http://sc15.supercomputing.org/blog/finalists-compete-prestigious-acm-gordon-bell-prize-high-performance-computing-august-20-2015">Gordon Bell Prize </a>will be announced at Supercomputing 2015 in Austin, Texas. He along with Costas, several other colleagues, and academic collaborators are one of five finalists for the prestigious prize, which IBM last won in 2013 by <a href="http://ibmresearchnews.blogspot.ch/2013/11/prestigious-gordon-bell-prize-goes-to.html#fbid=NB0hxA5Matp">simulating the cavitation of 15,000 bubbles</a>.</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Before all the excitement revs up, I had a chance to recently speak with him about his research and his passions.</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Tell us bit about your background.</span></b></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b></b><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Cristiano Malossi (CS):</span><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>I was born and grew up in Milan, Italy where we know a thing or two about great design and engineering. When it was time to chose a degree for my studies, I went straight towards aerospace and aeronautical engineering, as aircraft technology is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating real world application for engineering. </i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Studying airplanes and particularly aerodynamics, I developed a great interest towards CFD and numerical simulations. For this reason after receiving both undergrad and grad degrees from the Politecnico di Milano, I moved to the math department for one year to deepen my knowledge about computer modeling and numerical simulations. That was indeed the first time I faced a real geological problem, within a collaboration with the Italian firm ENI. In that context, our group developed tools to use supercomputers to study movements of the subsoil layers over the last 5-10 million years, with the aim to help geologist to identify possible new sources of oil for extraction.</i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Thanks to the results of that work, in 2009 Prof. Alfio Quarteroni offered me a PhD position in applied mathematics at the EPFL. Upon graduating and winning the IBM Research Prize, I joined IBM in July 2013.</i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">What was your first project at IBM?</span></b></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b></b><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">CS: <i>In high performance computing the conversation always starts with how many Flops? And what is the LINPACK ranking? But these numbers tell only a little part of the story. What really matters is time to result, and actual energy cost of the computation. Anyone can build a large supercomputer, but if it is inefficient at solving real large-scale problems, what's the point? So my first project was an EU project called <a href="http://exa2green-project.eu/">Exa2Green</a> which is short for "Energy Aware Sustainable Computing on Future Technology - Paving the Road to Exascale Computing".</i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Its goal was to essentially re-think algorithms to solve problems on high performance computers, faster and with less energy. More Flops isn't always better, and we demonstrated this. In fact, the project just recently wrapped up with very good results.</i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">You joined IBM a little too late to contribute to the 2013 Gordon Bell Prize, but now you are a co-author for 2015. Can you talk a little bit about your submission?</span></b></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b></b><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">CS: <i>To be clear, the submission is the result of a global collaboration with the University of Texas, New York University, California Institute of Technology, and IBM. And it wouldn't have been possible without access to the BlueGene supercomputers at RPI, Jülich and LLNL.</i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>We attempted to simulate mantle convection, which is the slow motion of magma caused by convection currents which carry heat from the interior of the planet towards the Earth's crust. </i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>This may sound a bit peculiar, but geologists consider it one of the "10 grand research questions in Earth sciences." Our current understanding of this principle is surprisingly very limited. In fact my colleague Costas Bekas likes to say that geologists understand planets millions of kilometers away better than our own.</i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Our idea was to simulate the mantle convection because it is directly responsible for earthquakes, volcano eruptions, mountain building and long-term sea level change.</i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>The biggest challenge was to combine all the many complex modeling ingredients needed to simulate such a tough problem, within a scalable implicit-solver algorithm, able to efficiently run on the largest supercomputers available today. This is the only way to push forward existing simulations, where either the model was simplified to by-pass algorithmic constraints, or the size of the problem was reduced considerably to run on smaller machines. </i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Our result is unique because incredibly we were able to efficiently use 97 percent of the 1.6 million cores and 96 racks of LLNL Sequoia supercomputer -- an efficiency loss of only 3 percent is unheard of. Our solver was able to speed up the time to solution in only a few days. Frankly, it's not possible to do any better in terms of efficiency at this scale.</i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMxxL3r3cP8yAg1LOhHo7h5PhXjgFEG256tY91nYr0Y2aQ7I6zXEXvrtksBJa4sTB2QmVqh43BU0BVPdyhsIEKf8Px0MWfgwnppj6SnBcp8p-cE2_KYQNnYZMp3G2MKPXWAQeowVQpKag/s1600/Pistenclub+HH+30.09.15++08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMxxL3r3cP8yAg1LOhHo7h5PhXjgFEG256tY91nYr0Y2aQ7I6zXEXvrtksBJa4sTB2QmVqh43BU0BVPdyhsIEKf8Px0MWfgwnppj6SnBcp8p-cE2_KYQNnYZMp3G2MKPXWAQeowVQpKag/s320/Pistenclub+HH+30.09.15++08.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cristiano taking laps in Hockenheimring (DE) in his Audi S3.</td></tr></tbody></table><b><span style="font-size: large;">When you aren't studying the Earth's mantle, what do you do for fun?</span></b></div><br /><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">CS: <i>Well I am a bit of a speed junky. Indeed I have been following Formula 1 since I was only six, and particularly during the Schumacher-Ferrari era I was so enthusiastic that I woke up during the night to follow races on the other side of the planet. When I recently discovered that on a few days per year it is possible to drive your own car on these same historical F1 tracks that I saw many times on TV, I could not resist. And so whenever I get the chance I enjoy taking my 360 horsepower Audi S3 to the racetrack. </i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>I am still a rookie pilot, but I already drove on a few tracks, including Monza which is not far from my hometown, and next year I plan to drive on many more.</i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Connect with Cristiano on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristianomalossi">LinkedIn</a> or follow him on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/C_Malossi">@C_Malossi</a></i></span></div>

Name: Cristiano Malossi Location: IBM Research - Zurich Nationality: Italian Focus: High Performance Computing In 2013 Cristiano Malossi re...

Eureka Moments Lead to Radical New Memory Design

3:46 AM N1000 0

<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 107%;"></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5722/21114532851_8505903b81_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5722/21114532851_8505903b81_n.jpg" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Koelmans and Sebastian in the lab where the </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">new memory design was developed</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">IBM researcher </span><span lang="DE"><a href="http://researcher.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=zurich-WKO"><span class="Hyperlink0"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">Wabe Koelmans</span></span></a></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"> had the first significant eureka moment of his young, promising career on Saturday, 14 December 2013. </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: large;">The Dutch scientist is focused on emerging memory technologies based on what are known as <a href="http://www.research.ibm.com/labs/zurich/sto/pcm/">phase change materials</a>. Such materials can be used to store data quickly, simply by applying electrical pulses to the material, which is sandwiched between two metal electrodes.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"></span></span><a name="more"></a><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">Koelmans started his experiment the prior evening at IBM</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">’</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">s Zurich Lab and then went home for the night to monitor the results from the comfort of his apartment. By Saturday he and his colleague </span><span lang="DE"><a href="http://researcher.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=zurich-ASE"><span class="Hyperlink0"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">Abu Sebastian</span></span></a></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">, were already seeing significant progress.</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">After Koelmans made a small tweak to the experiment they exchanged some messages, and similar to waiting for a movie to finish downloading, they anxiously stared at their screens and waited.</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">“</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">It was extremely addictive to check the experiment</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">’</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">s progress, so we were both very excited and logging in regularly. I ran over 60 experiments, each taking half an hour, in that weekend, but it was worth it,</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">”</span> <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">said Koelmans.</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">By Sunday morning, with a cup of coffee in hand, Koelmans saw the remarkable </span><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS';">—</span> <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">drift was virtually non-existent. The significance of this requires a bit of explaining.</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">An Introduction to Drift</span></b><b><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">Phase change memory (PCM) devices have been investigated since the early 1970s and in the past 12 months IBM scientists have made tremendous progress with this technology publishing a number of milestone papers which demonstrate multiple bits per cell, making the technology extremely competitive with Flash.</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="NL" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">But PCM doesn</span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">’</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">t come without some drawbacks<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS';">—</span> </span> a primary culprit being resistance drift. Drift is the change in resistance of the stored levels over time. Essentially the data moves causing your text document or your photo to eventually become corrupted and unusable </span><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS';">—</span> <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">a very bad characteristic for a storage technology.</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWEzXJXMBXZBnHl4ZFdlyqsDXBvBx0vmSp7YbAus-6jWcTJNVzGkHltRYHVBb1GYO3o_nBVImYMsFj9GREAjtkRbpOG6tIZz9cb-uyQqFwO47zPhUG1e6H2K4JF09t7rgTobKBfkimj40/s1600/paper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWEzXJXMBXZBnHl4ZFdlyqsDXBvBx0vmSp7YbAus-6jWcTJNVzGkHltRYHVBb1GYO3o_nBVImYMsFj9GREAjtkRbpOG6tIZz9cb-uyQqFwO47zPhUG1e6H2K4JF09t7rgTobKBfkimj40/s320/paper.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">    <i style="font-family: AdvOTea1a7398;">Fig B: </i><span style="font-family: AdvOTea1a7398;">The desired </span><span style="font-family: 'AdvOT9bd21c25.I';">I</span><span style="font-family: AdvOTea1a7398;">–</span><span style="font-family: 'AdvOT9bd21c25.I';">V </span><span style="font-family: AdvOTea1a7398;">characteristics corresponding to the </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: AdvOTea1a7398; font-size: large;">phase-change and projection segments are shown schematically <br />Credit: Nature Communications  </span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">A significant breakthrough to eliminate drift came a couple of years back when IBM scientists from Zurich and Yorktown Heights, NY proposed a novel device concept where the </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">physical mechanism of writing is decoupled from the read process. To use an analogy, during the write cycle the electric pulse goes straight down through the material like water washing over a boulder in the middle of a river. But as in <i>figure B</i> during the read, the pulse goes around the material, or the boulder, decoupling the write and the read. This allows storing information without suffering from the drift that normally comes with it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">Patents for these inventions are currently pending or have been assigned including </span><span lang="DE"><a href="http://patents.justia.com/patent/9087987"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">Phase-change Memory Cells</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"> (2015)</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">, </span><span lang="DE"><a href="http://patents.justia.com/patent/20150003144"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">Resistive Random-Access Memory Cells</span></a></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"> and </span><span lang="DE"><a href="http://patents.justia.com/patent/20140369114"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">Phase-Change Memory Cells</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"> (2014)</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">, see also </span><span lang="DE"><a href="http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6724727"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">IEDM 2013</span></a></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">.</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS';">“</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">Over the years, IBM scientists have developed powerful techniques mostly based on read/write methodology and signal processing to counter resistance drift in order to facilitate multi-bit storage<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">," </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">said Abu Sebastian, one of the IBM co-inventors of the concept comments</span>.</span> "</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">However, a device-level solution with substantially lower drift will further improve the error-rate performance and could enable the storage of a higher number of bits per device using the same techniques.”</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><br /></span>               </span><br /><div class="Default"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: large;">Despite the promise of the concept, a physical realization of such a device with a conclusive experimental demonstration of all its benefits was still missing.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">Eureka 2.0</span></b><b><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="Default"><div class="Default"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: large;">During a period of eight months, Koelmans and his colleagues continued optimizing the design and materials to achieve fast write speeds and high endurance, attributes that make PCM a compelling memory candidate for high-throughput applications in the cloud.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">Then came Monday, March 30, 2015. </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">On this fateful spring day, Koelmans had his second significant eureka moment: near e</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">limination of noise. </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: large;">In PCM devices, besides drift, the resistance levels also experience random fluctuations. This low-frequency noise (1/f) behavior is a nightmare for multi-level storage. Drift having been dealt with, this noise is arguably the second largest challenge that limits the number of bits one could store in a single PCM device. Koelmans observed almost complete elimination of this 1/f noise in these devices.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>                    <br /><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS';">“</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">It</span><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS';">’</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">s easy to focus on the near-elimination of resistance drift, but this is only one of the benefits. The two others: much reduced 1/f noise and much reduced - and predictable - temperature dependence are also very important. In the end, you need a stable signal (resistance) over time and temperature and a good signal-to-noise ratio to facilitate multi-level PCM,</span><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS';">”</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"> said Koelmans.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbJjLdMiC2VvH7WyraiSH1gyFMdbYO0gAZhbXJf84IyF5E0bSdHA6uYahQfwkVmqb_HZYBNRmOTbLAA_o0503pTxY0s1ztDEr6rXaJj_n4IOfEwJL0BOqCStHmKHdq3vKCsw9ZLOVzsiA/s1600/PCM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbJjLdMiC2VvH7WyraiSH1gyFMdbYO0gAZhbXJf84IyF5E0bSdHA6uYahQfwkVmqb_HZYBNRmOTbLAA_o0503pTxY0s1ztDEr6rXaJj_n4IOfEwJL0BOqCStHmKHdq3vKCsw9ZLOVzsiA/s320/PCM.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><div class="page" title="Page 3"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><span style="font-family: 'AdvOTea1a7398'; font-size: large;">Schematic 3D view of projected </span><br /><span style="font-family: 'AdvOTea1a7398'; font-size: large;">phase-change memory devices with lateral geometry.</span><br /><span style="font-family: 'AdvOTea1a7398'; font-size: large;">Credit: Nature Communications</span></div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">The next morning Koelmans ran into the office of team leader and IBM Fellow <a href="http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=zurich-ele">Evangelos Eleftheriou</a>, who was astonished<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">, and</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"> <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">agr<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">eed that they <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';">needed </span></span></span>publish right away.</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: large;">Five months later Koelmans and the team delivered. Today in the peer-reviewed journal of <a href="http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150903/ncomms9181/full/ncomms9181.html">Nature Communications</a> (<a href="http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150903/ncomms9181/full/ncomms9181.html">10.1038/NCOMMS9181</a>) this new, radical memory cell design is being reported on for the first time which the team calls projected phase change memory, which features virtually no drift and very little noise. The paper introduces the concept, along with the design, fabrication, and simulation of such devices with the results.</span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>                                                                                      <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: large;">IBM scientists believe that projected phase change memory devices could also play a key role in future non-Von Neumann computing paradigms such as brain-inspired, neuromorphic computing.</span>   <br /><a href="http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogger.com%2Fblogger.g%3FblogID%3D3821464279005499761%23editor%2Ftarget%3Dpost%3BpostID%3D61242624046173874%3BonPublishedMenu%3Dallposts%3BonClosedMenu%3Dallposts%3BpostNum%3D0%3Bsrc%3Dlink&media=https%3A%2F%2Ffarm6.staticflickr.com%2F5722%2F21114532851_8505903b81_n.jpg&xm=h&xv=sa1.37.01&xuid=tYDKQnV6ndWa&description=" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url(data:image/png; border: none; cursor: pointer; display: none; height: 20px; left: 353px; opacity: 0.85; position: absolute; top: 24px; width: 40px; z-index: 8675309;"></a><a href="http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogger.com%2Fblogger.g%3FblogID%3D3821464279005499761%23editor%2Ftarget%3Dpost%3BpostID%3D61242624046173874%3BonPublishedMenu%3Dallposts%3BonClosedMenu%3Dallposts%3BpostNum%3D0%3Bsrc%3Dlink&media=https%3A%2F%2Ffarm6.staticflickr.com%2F5722%2F21114532851_8505903b81_n.jpg&xm=h&xv=sa1.37.01&xuid=tYDKQnV6ndWa&description=" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url(data:image/png; border: none; cursor: pointer; display: none; height: 20px; left: 353px; opacity: 1; position: absolute; top: 24px; width: 40px; z-index: 8675309;"></a>

memory nature communications PCM phase change memory zurich Eureka Moments Lead to Radical New Memory Design

Koelmans and Sebastian in the lab where the new memory design was developed IBM researcher Wabe Koelmans had the first significant eureka ...

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<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-4HUVguIgG58WkboUW9O9nsDXOOg7OQLcygpQbAHZN8eKGoH0zo_yBUShsoH2bAJ1Cg1-GgLroP_Orrx-Gr7XVy3vkIgoFxJeaxAiXUcImPr7mrWQKrzymx4MzLk2xBjtl5oZL8W801A/s1600/14426242840_2439eae28a_q.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-4HUVguIgG58WkboUW9O9nsDXOOg7OQLcygpQbAHZN8eKGoH0zo_yBUShsoH2bAJ1Cg1-GgLroP_Orrx-Gr7XVy3vkIgoFxJeaxAiXUcImPr7mrWQKrzymx4MzLk2xBjtl5oZL8W801A/s1600/14426242840_2439eae28a_q.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: large;">IBM scientist <a href="http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=zurich-lui">Ronald Luijten</a> has many hobbies, from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A-dlZKX3nU&edit=vd">gliding over the Swiss alps at 4,000 meters</a>, to taking photos with his <a href="https://flic.kr/p/9fwvKX">quadrocopter</a>, or tinkering with technology -- particularly microservers, which he refers to as "data centers in a box."<br /><br />By day, Ronald is working on a <a href="http://www.enterprisetech.com/2014/07/07/ibm-dome-microserver-appeal-enterprises/">64-bit microserver </a>for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), an international consortium to build the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope. He hopes that someday petabytes of Big Data from the Big Bang (13 billion years ago) will be crunched on the microserver, and uncover fundamental questions about the universe, including are we alone? <br /><br />By night and on the weekends, Ronald has also built a microserver to host his website <a href="http://swissdutch.ch/">swissdutch.ch</a>. The passionate environmentalist spent this past weekend "unplugging" his microserver from the electricity grid and and now powers it from solar panels backed-up with batteries. <br /><br />"On September 27, 2014, I changed the energy source of the wandboard Quad to solar panels. I installed 40W of photo-voltaic panels feeding a lead acid battery of 18Ah (2x 9 Ah). The panels come in increments of 20W, and I did not think 20W was enough to make it through winter. Note that around this time of year (September), the sun is right between its minimum and maximum high point. So, I pointed the panels due south at an angle of 45 degrees," Ronald said. <br /><br />To keep track of Ronald's progress visit his <a href="http://swissdutch.ch/">blog</a> or follow him on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/ronaldgadget">@ronaldgadget </a></span><br /><div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="section" style="background-color: rgb(100.000000%, 100.000000%, 100.000000%);"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="section" style="background-color: rgb(100.000000%, 100.000000%, 100.000000%);"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="section" style="background-color: rgb(100.000000%, 100.000000%, 100.000000%);"><div class="layoutArea"><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghwxsFHKPG1C8boIvhXOJ95mE3-JzlUnFHVLXYMsAylVEanWAmpfyH111MvcK-pPA5OkFxrIPIhDWxFpznmBJ91eGLhw4bcfSo1nysUQR_kg6OrzcFBxWAhkCP4NEaiZuJFjUtHE1MBiA/s1600/40Wpanels.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghwxsFHKPG1C8boIvhXOJ95mE3-JzlUnFHVLXYMsAylVEanWAmpfyH111MvcK-pPA5OkFxrIPIhDWxFpznmBJ91eGLhw4bcfSo1nysUQR_kg6OrzcFBxWAhkCP4NEaiZuJFjUtHE1MBiA/s1600/40Wpanels.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQZbpdR__BAf-wMM2btJPi-JvFIxG7Sc9y0yaT-KcCFlIDsKx5kSBeSysb0nBOOuTIsTkxo7mWhyphenhyphennDnPVtHN1Q1Go2xd7dRAGkIEKVVtIEljnW7ro_G9hD3HE-SvI30F8zNriwP_6ZLlQ/s1600/MeasureControl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="126" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQZbpdR__BAf-wMM2btJPi-JvFIxG7Sc9y0yaT-KcCFlIDsKx5kSBeSysb0nBOOuTIsTkxo7mWhyphenhyphennDnPVtHN1Q1Go2xd7dRAGkIEKVVtIEljnW7ro_G9hD3HE-SvI30F8zNriwP_6ZLlQ/s1600/MeasureControl.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_UM_zBZwTEBsgpK1Umiz2Qz47oNbsNGr4kmuYWfQyL3ctZd4bzrs7MTTJowniM5HNz6R5UkZBBfX63ubaPP0WgX_FYQXSIFoWI2pUgAGVbsODyNqOUXM1gFVnmzIpVzN9r0kAvdVpyN0/s1600/SolarTestSetup.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_UM_zBZwTEBsgpK1Umiz2Qz47oNbsNGr4kmuYWfQyL3ctZd4bzrs7MTTJowniM5HNz6R5UkZBBfX63ubaPP0WgX_FYQXSIFoWI2pUgAGVbsODyNqOUXM1gFVnmzIpVzN9r0kAvdVpyN0/s1600/SolarTestSetup.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="layoutArea"><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;"><br /></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>

microprocessor SKA solar zurich Microserver powered by the sun

IBM scientist Ronald Luijten has many hobbies, from gliding over the Swiss alps at 4,000 meters , to taking photos with his quadrocopter , ...