Sasikanth Manipatruni
Lead author of Intel's 2018 MESO paper for beyond-CMOS computing.
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Sasikanth Manipatruni is an Indian-American computer scientist and inventor whose research spans beyond-CMOS energy-efficient computing, spintronics, and silicon photonics. He was the lead author of a 2018 Nature paper from Intel that introduced MESO (magneto-electric spin-orbit devices), an experimental logic technology that uses multiferroics and spin-orbit coupling to achieve very low switching energies. His work has been covered by outlets such as Berkeley News, Physics World, Nature research communities, and The Register, and has been cited in peer-reviewed reviews in Nature and Reviews of Modern Physics, where MESO is described as a possible route beyond traditional transistor scaling. Manipatruni has also contributed to silicon photonics, spintronics, and quantum materials.
He has co-authored around 50 research papers and holds roughly 400 patents, which have been cited about 10,000 times. His research areas include electro-optic modulators, cavity optomechanics, nanophotonics, optical interconnects, spintronics, and new logic devices aimed at extending Moore’s law. His work has appeared in Nature, Nature Physics, Nature Communications, Science Advances, and Physical Review Letters, and is included in publicly archived lectures of the US National Academy of Sciences.
Manipatruni attended Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya for his schooling. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Physics from IIT Delhi in 2005, graduating with the institute silver medal. He also conducted research under the Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana at the Indian Institute of Science, working at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, and studied optimal control at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
Independent outlets have highlighted MESO’s potential. Physics World described it as combining topological materials and multiferroics to achieve ultra-low voltage logic switching. Berkeley News called it a breakthrough that could move computing beyond the semiconductor era. Recent peer-reviewed reviews identify MESO as a promising direction in beyond-CMOS logic research.
Background
Manipatruni completed his schooling from Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya and received a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Physics from IIT Delhi in 2005, where he graduated with the institute silver medal. He also completed research under the Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana at Indian Institute of Science, working at Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics and in optimal control at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Zurich. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering with a minor in applied engineering physics from Cornell University, with thesis advisors Michal Lipson and Alexander Gaeta.
His PhD thesis focused on developing silicon photonics by progressively scaling the speed of electro-optic modulation from 1 GHz to 12.5 Gbit/s, 18 Gbit/s, and 50 Gbit/s on a single physical optical channel driven by a silicon photonic component. This work showed that silicon can be used as a material to turn light signals on and off, allowing high-quality engineering from the electronics industry to be adopted for photonics. In combination with Keren Bergman at Columbia University, micro-ring modulator research led to demonstrations including the first long-haul transmission using silicon microring modulators, first error-free transmission of microring-modulated BPSK, and first experimental bit-error-rate validation of 12.5-Gb/s silicon modulator enabling photonic networks-on-chip.
Manipatruni, Lipson, and collaborators at Intel projected a roadmap requiring the use of silicon micro-ring modulators to meet bandwidth and density needs of on-die communication links. While originally considered thermally unstable, by early 2020s micro-ring modulators received wide adoption for computing needs at Intel, Ayar Labs, Global Foundries, and varied optical interconnect usages.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Sasikanth Manipatruni (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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