JARA-FIT: New Approaches in Information Technology

  Copyright: © Forschungszentrum Jülich

Semiconductor-based information technology has started an industrial revolution about 30 years ago, its products permeating almost all social areas of today. In the upcoming decades, there will be more application fields added to it.

 

These fields of application today seem utopian, as for example individual simultaneous translation, full navigation systems for automotive engineering, intelligent software agents for internet and autonomous service roboters.

In order to make full use of this application potential, research is scaling current silicium technology up to its foreseeable physical limits, and pursuing alternative concepts such as molecular electronics, spintronics and quantum information processing.

A new level of quality such as the connection of the "bio- and neuroworld" with the world of solid body electronics are researched intensively to increase computer and memory capacity and further miniaturisation. The increasing complexity of information technology requires a multifold cooperation of different disciplines and harmonised approach of numerous groups of experts.

The corresponding explorative and basic research of IT has leadership position at RWTH Aachen University and Forschungszentrum Jülich in the most different areas at an international level. This forms an ideal starting point for the creation of a strong alliance in the area of future information technology taking place in the Section JARA-FIT.

Goals

The goal of JARA-FIT is the coordinated enhancement of infrastructure in the region, the development of a topics-oriented education, as well as the joint development of research strategies. Here, JARA-FIT makes use of the experience gained with the successful establishment of the joint Ernst-Ruska Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons, as well as three existing Virtual Helmholtz Institutes.

Partners in Collaboration for Tomorrow's Information Technologies

Twenty-two RWTH institutes and eleven institutes of Forschungszentrum Jülich in the areas of physics, chemistry, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering are participating in the JARA-FIT initiative, which will develop the fundamentals of future information processing, together with internationally leading businesses of information technology.

This comprises, among others,

• the utilisation of different tension effects for optimisation of future transistors,
• the development of light exposure sources in extreme UV dimensions for the production of building component structures down to 5 nm material developments,
• to make phase change materials employed in DVDs useable for internally addressed memory (RAM),
• and to miniaturise them to their physical limits, ultralight addressed magnetic memory as well as alternative chip architectures.

In addition, the researchers will develop totally new concepts for the utilization of electrolytic processes, individual molecules, nerve cells or quantum-mechanic interlacing for data processing.