EINC — the Future of Computing

Turing-based computing has proven highly instrumental in solving scientific problems for decades. Today, however, both technological and fundamental limitations are emerging in many areas of these traditional computing systems. At EINC, our common goal is to explore new paradigms of information processing based on the concept of Physical Computing. To support this endeavor, the new EINC research building provides 2200 square meters of floor space, comprising offices, laboratories, clean rooms, and a large experimental hall; it is also home to the Cluster of Excellence STRUCTURES.

Past events

Research

Elec­trons —
Spik­ing Neu­ro­mor­phic Hard­ware

We develop accelerated analog neuromorphic hardware systems. Based on CMOS microelectronics technology, our BrainScaleS architecture is a flexibly configurable analog computing system providing a platform for experimental exploration of novel computing paradigms based on physical computing. Possible applications range from brain emulation with event-driven (“spiking”) communication and structured neurons to analog linear algebra and deep convolutional neural networks. In addition to developing novel hardware, we emphasize software to integrate analog data processing into today's ubiquitous digital infrastructure. BrainScaleS is accessible via the Neuromorphic computing offer of the EBRAINS Research Infrastructure for neuroscience.

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Pho­tons —
Highly­-integrated Neu­ro­mor­phic Op­tics

We de­sign in­te­grated pho­tonic cir­cuits for neu­ro­mor­phic and quan­tum com­put­ing and nanofab­ri­cate chip­scale sys­tems in our clean­rooms. Both in­te­grated op­ti­cal chips and con­trol pe­riph­ery are man­u­fac­tured in-house, mak­ing use of pre­ci­sion nanopro­cess­ing and nanoan­a­lyt­ics. Pho­tonic com­put­ing ap­proaches of­fer mas­sive gains in through­put and pro­cess­ing speed, to en­able un­con­ven­tional com­put­ing be­yond the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of von-Neumann com­put­ers. By merg­ing brain-inspired ar­chi­tec­tures with con­cepts from quan­tum physics, we aim to im­ple­ment ver­sa­tile ar­chi­tec­tures for quan­tum com­put­ing, quan­tum com­mu­ni­ca­tion and quan­tum sim­u­la­tion.

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Atoms —
Ul­tra­cold Quan­tum Sim­u­la­tors

We ex­plore and de­velop ma­chines for the pro­duc­tion of ul­tra­cold quan­tum gases which of­fer a vast quan­tum re­source for quan­tum sim­u­la­tors as well as quan­tum reser­voir com­pu­ta­tion. We de­velop new quan­tum op­ti­cal tools for the high-speed prepa­ra­tion as well as unique read­out strate­gies go­ing be­yond the stan­dard realm of pro­jec­tive mea­sure­ments. With this new level of con­trol of in­put as well as pos­si­ble out­put con­fig­u­ra­tions we ex­tend the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of quan­tum gases as a com­pu­ta­tional re­source and tackle fun­da­men­tal but still open ques­tions in cos­mol­ogy, high-energy physics and con­densed mat­ter.

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