This seminar can be found here http://async.org.uk/JohnCarpenter.html
NEMIG: Electromagnetism without fields – Dr John Carpenter – 6th December 2013
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NEMIG Event – ‘Electromagnetism without fields’ – 6/12/13
The Newcastle Electromagnetics Interest Group (NEMIG) is pleased to announce an event entitled ‘Electromagnetism without fields’, on 6/12/13 in M.4.13 (CPD Room) at 1:30 – 3:00 pm.
A talk followed by discussion session will be held by NEMG and external speaker Dr. Charles (John) Carpenter BSc DSc FIET CEng, Visiting Research Fellow, Bristol University.
A short abstract of the talk is;
Electrical engineers commonly regard electromagnetism as a difficult subject, because field theory is seen as fundamental to it. The talk explores a different approach, first explored by Maxwell, which does not depend on the field equations. It helps to clarify many different concepts, including the induction of EMF, and the different methods of electromagnetic power transfer.
Dr. Carpenter has a wide-ranging interest in electromagnetic theory, following on from an industrial experience in electrical machines and actuators. His Published work includes the numerical solution of field problems, methods of calculating forces and EMFs, machine losses, and equivalent circuits. More recently, his papers have centred on fundamentals, and, in particular, on the consequences of using the potentials, instead of the field vectors, as base electromagnetic variables. This has many implications, including teaching and understanding, particularly for those not wishing to specialise in field theory.
We welcome all to this event and hope to see you there, this is sure to be a very interesting and informative event!
Newcastle Electromagnetism Seminar with Ivor Catt and David Walton
I have just held (on Wed. 9th October 2013) a unique research event at Newcastle, a seminar on Electromagnetism, with Ivor Catt and David Walton speaking about their unconventional electromagnetic theory (based on Oliver Heaviside’s notion of energy current).
What motivated me to organize this seminar:
Why Electromagnetism? It is because there is quite a lot of interesting knowledge in the work of Ivor Catt’s team on TEM that could and should be discussed with academics and young researchers working with one or another side of electromagnetic theory in their specific areas, including Power Electronics and Microsystems.
Why Newcastle? Because there is a close connection between David Walton with Newcastle, facts that Oliver Heaviside sent his Morse pulses from Newcastle, good research community here, who have natural curiosity and are not afraid of controversy.
The details of the seminar and the videos of the lectures can be found here:
http://async.org.uk/IvorCatt+DavidWalton.html
Profile for Horizon 2020 and opportunities for electronics for survival
My article about building computer systems that will live without batteries, by taking energy
from the environment, in Pan European Networks Horizon 2020 series
http://horizon2020projects.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ST8-Microelectronics-System_11254-Pro.pdf
Here is my research group’s partner profile for Horizon 2020 project ideas
http://horizon2020projects.com/partner-profile/partner-profile-h30130/
ARM’s drive to a near-threshold voltage processor for Internet-of-Things
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1319229&
Interesting article.
Though my vision for IoT goes beyond simple energy-efficiency, because it is the same old story – you can be very efficient in perfect conditions (narrow band of power supply).
Instead, it should be about operating in a wide dynamic power range. Therefore energy-modulated computing is a way. Scoop some energy from the environment and drive your logic from a cap! There maybe nothing left for computation if you start to apply smart power regulation. As we say in Russian – “ne do gribov” (no chance for luxury)!
Anecdotes about hyperbolas and future of hybrid computing
http://async.org.uk/tech-memos/NCL-EEE-MSD-MEMO-2013-007.pdf
This memo talks about an emerging paradigm of computing using hyperbolas that are a result of the dynamic behaviour in systems consisting of a container (capacitor, bank account …) and a discrete event generator whose level of activity is modulated by the amount stored in the container (pressure, charge, amount of money…). It attempts to raise motivation for studying this phenomenon from some basic principles and analogues in real world (economy, physics, biology).
Technical report about survival instincts in electronic systems
http://async.org.uk/tech-reports/NCL-EEE-MSD-TR-2013-181.pdf
I wrote this article as a chapter to Peter Cheung’s 60th birthday Festschrift.
Here is the abstract:
The writing of this paper has been inspired by the motivating ideas of
incorporating self-awareness into systems that have been studied by
Prof Cheung in connection to dealing with variability and ageing in
nano-scale electronics. We attempt here to exploit the opportunities for
making systems self-aware, and taking it further, see them in a
biological perspective of survival under harsh operating conditions.
Survivability is developed here in the context of the availability of
energy and power, where the notion of power-modulation will navigate
us towards the incorporation into system design of the mechanisms
analogous to instincts in human brain. These mechanisms are
considered here through a set of novel techniques for reference-free
sensing and elastic memory for data retention. This is only a beginning
in the exploration of system design for survival, and many other
developments such as design of self-aware communication fabric are
further on the way.
New hybrid electronics (caps and async switching logic) as a computing engine for many fractal (power law) processes in nature …
Image
In the simple example of connecting a charged capacitor to a self-timed switching circuit, say a ring oscillator (Fig.1)
we have the process of discharging the cap shown in Fig. 2 (this is taken from the testing of the real silicon – 180nm CMOS). A simple mathematical analysis of this behaviour considers the discretisation, shown in Fig. 3 and 4, which is captured by the hyperbola function in Fig. 5 for V vs time (if we only look at the super-threshold region of the transistors in the inverters). Here K is a ratio of charge sharing between the main cap and a small parasitic cap that is charged at every step of the switching process in the ring chain. A is a constant determined by the inherent parameters of the transistors in the inverters in the oscillator.
One can generalise this analysis to considering a situation with a capacitive source of energy and an arbitrary asynchronous circuit being powered by such a cap. The math characetrisation of such systems will involve use of power laws. Indeed, a simple huperbola described by y=a/x is already a power law. Consider x and y both in log scale, this will be log(y)=log(a)-log(x), which is a straight descending slope lifted up to log(a).
My conjecture is that most of the processes in biology (such a development of biogradients from concentrations of nutrient molecules), economics (bank accounts being debited by its users) etc., they all fit similar patterns. So, isn’t the system of caps and async switching circuits an adequate computational paradigm (and a new type of computers!) for many processes in real life?
Our ASYNC 2013 Presentation
Link
ASYNC 2013 took place in Santa Monica, California.
Our presentation of the paper:
CAPACITOR DISCHARGING THROUGH ASYNCHRONOUS CIRCUIT SWITCHING
Reza Ramezani and Alex Yakovlev
Can be found here: http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/alex.yakovlev/home.formal/talks/Ramezani-Yakovlev-ASYNC2013-presentation.pdf
Demo of our reference-free voltage sensor chip
A short video showing the highlights of a 180nm CMOS chip with our reference-free voltage sensor (based on the our patented method of charge to digital conversion) is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u85NOC0Rpr0