The Future of Computing
From filling rooms in the '60's to filling your pocket in the '00's, computers are growing smaller and smaller. Since we've managed to create circuits at the atomic level, the next logical step is quantum computing -- manipulating subatomic particles to perform computations! Quantum computers manipulate individual ions trapped in an electric field to perform calculations that could take a standard computer years to perform. In fact, the U.S. Department of Defense has a significant interest in this technology (which is why we're never under-funded).
I'm on a small team of computer engineers perfecting the Yellow Box™, a programmable pulse generator. This device allows physicists to generate electrical pulses to drive the lasers manipulating the qubits. Inside the Yellow Box™ is an Altera™ Cyclone™ field-programmable gate array, which my group is responsible for configuring. The Yellow Box™ is already in use by many researchers around the world, but it's far from perfect -- making it an interesting research project that could have interesting implications for the future of computing.
For more information, see the blog.
How I Became Involved...
During the fall quarter of 2009, I took CSE 467: Advanced Digital Design. Paul Pham, the leader of the group, gave a presentation on the Yellow Box™ and its corresponding research. I was interested, but to be honest it sounded a little too straightforward. Since the Tuesday and Thursday meetings immediately followed my lab time, I started dropping in. By the end of the quarter, I figured it might make a good research opportunity -- and I signed up for research the next quarter. I'm hoping I can get 9 credits of research out of this, so I can do my Honors thesis on it...
What I've Done
Since the quarter started only three weeks ago (as of this writing), I haven't had much time to do anything. Here's a quick overview of my accomplishments; for more details, see the blog.
- Clock Source Programming - I figured out how to program a clock source board using a Python script.
- Clock Divider Programming - The Yellow Box™ used in the lab has a really complicated clock divider that also needs programming on power-on. I wrote a Python script to do that as well.
