A new project called MultiSpin.AI was launched in February 2024 and will go on for a period of three years. The project has secured funding totaling more than three million euros from the EIC Pathfinder funding program.
MultiSpin.AI proposes to apply spintronics to the field of artificial intelligence. Processing units will be developed for electrical circuits based on magnetic tunnel junctions. This is a quantum phenomenon that allows electrons to behave in ways not foreseen in classical physics, being able to cross obstacles that, under ‘usual’ conditions, they would not have enough energy to overcome.
The magnetic tunnel junctions developed by MultiSpin.AI will exhibit multiple distinguishable magnetic states, allowing for more than the usual two digital states (the ‘ON’ and ‘OFF’, or 1 and 0, when represented in binary code). In this way, and using concepts from quantum mechanics, the aim is to achieve significant gains in terms of computing speed and energy efficiency.
The impact of MultiSpin.AI is expected to be relevant in artificial intelligence applications that require high energy consumption and increased computational resources, thus benefiting from the optimization of processing capacity brought by this project (for example, in areas that require “on-site” computing, such as autonomous mobility or robotics).
The research consortium brings together researchers from INESC MN (a research unit affiliated with Instituto Superior Técnico) ,Bar-Ilan University (Israel) and Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), as well as industrial partners such as SpinEdge (Israel) and I-FEVS (Italy).