Every computer, from the large, clunky machines of the past to today's AI accelerators, depends on a physical phenomenon that can represent information. For decades, that role has been played by the controlled movement of electrical charge through billions of transistors etched onto a chip. 

A Georgia Tech-led research team is exploring a different approach. Rather than relying on charge alone to perform logic operations, the researchers are investigating whether nanoscale mechanical strain can serve as a new way to represent and process information. 

"Whether it's charge, light, magnetism, or strain, computing doesn't care how information is transported as long as it reliably represents a one and a zero," said School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Associate Professor Asif Khan. "Our approach explores a different path by blending multiple information-carrying modalities together." 

Led by Khan, the effort has received $10.6 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Fast and Curious program, an initiative focused on developing logic circuits that are at least 100 times more energy efficient than today's state-of-the-art technologies.