Sasikanth Manipatruni is an Indian-American computer scientist and inventor known for his work in Beyond CMOS energy-efficient computing, spintronics and Silicon photonics. He is the lead author on Intel's 2018 Nature paper proposing MESO magneto-electric spin-orbit devices, an experimental beyond-CMOS logic technology combining Multiferroics and spin-orbit coupling to achieve ultra-low switching energies. His research has been covered by independent science outlets including Berkeley News, Physics World, Nature research communities and The Register and expert peer reviewed research reviews in Nature, Reviews of Modern Physics, which describe MESO as a potential path beyond conventional transistor scaling. Manipatruni contributed to developments in silicon photonics, spintronics and quantum materials. Manipatruni is a co-author of 50 research papers and ~400 patents (cited about 10000 times ) in the areas of electro-optic modulators, Cavity optomechanics, nanophotonics & optical interconnects, spintronics, and new logic devices for extension of Moore's law. His work has appeared in Nature, Nature Physics, Nature communications, Science advances and Physical Review Letters and in publicly archived lectures of US National Academy of Sciences.
Early life and education Manipatruni completed his schooling from Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya. Later, he received a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Physics from IIT Delhi in 2005 where he graduated with the institute silver medal. He also completed research under the Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana at Indian Institute of Science working at Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics and in optimal control at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Zurich.
Research Impact Independent outlets highlighted MESO's potential: Physics World described it as "combining topological materials and multiferroics to achieve ultra-low voltage logic switching". Berkeley News called it a "breakthrough that could take computers beyond the semiconductor era." Recent peer-reviewed reviews identify MESO as a promising direction in beyond-CMOS logic research. Article by Nobel Laureate Albert Fert in Reviews of Modern Physics prominently discusses MESO and its impact as "MESO is expected to strongly reduce power consumption for computation by harnessing ferroic materials that have embedded non-volatility and by relying on a voltage rather than a current to switch the ferroic order parameter". MESO has been reviewed as a higher energy efficiency logic technology in multiple secondary reviews and annual magnetism roadmaps. MESO and subcomponents have been investigated in multiple research and doctoral dissertation projects. Manipatruni received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering with minor in applied engineering physics from Cornell University. The title of his thesis was "Scaling silicon nanophotonic interconnects : silicon electrooptic modulators, slowlight & optomechanical devices". His thesis advisors were Michal Lipson and Alexander Gaeta at Cornell University. He has co-authored academic research with Michal Lipson, Alexander Gaeta, Keren Bergman, Ramamoorthy Ramesh, Lane W. Martin, Naresh Shanbhag, Jian-Ping Wang, Paul McEuen, Christopher J. Hardy, Felix Casanova, Ehsan Afshari, Alyssa Apsel, Jacob T. Robinson, fr:Manuel Bibes spanning Condensed matter physics, Electronics and devices, Photonics, Circuit theory, Computer architecture and hardware for Artificial intelligence areas.
Silicon optical links Manipatruni's PhD thesis was focused on developing the then nascent field of silicon photonics by progressively scaling the speed of electro-optic modulation from 1 GHz to 12.5 Gbit/s, 18 Gbit/s and 50 Gbit/s on a single physical optical channel driven by a silicon photonic component. The significance of silicon for optical uses can be understood as follows: nearly 95% of modern Integrated circuit technology is based on silicon-based semiconductors which have high productivity in Semiconductor device fabrication due to the use of large single crystal wafers and extraordinary control of the quality of the interfaces. However, Photonic integrated circuits are still majorly manufactured using III-V compound semiconductor materials and II-VI semiconductor compound materials, whose engineering lags silicon industry by several decades (judged by number of wafers and devices produced per year). By showing that silicon can be used as a material to turn light signal on and off, silicon electro-optic modulators allow for use of high-quality engineering developed for the electronics industry to be adopted for photonics/optics industry. This the foundational argument used by silicon electro-optics researchers. This work was paralleled closely at leading industrial research groups at Intel, IBM and Luxtera during 2005–2010 with industry adopting and improving various methods developed at academic research labs. Manipatruni's work showed that it is practically possible to develop free carrier injection modulators (in contrast to carrier depletion modulators) to reach high speed modulation by engineering injection of free carriers via pre-amplification and back-to-back connected injection mode devices. In combination with Keren Bergman at Columbia University, micro-ring modulator research led to demonstration of a number of firsts in long-distance uses of silicon photonics utilizing silicon based injection mode electro-optic modulators including first demonstration of long-haul transmission using silicon microring modulators first Error-free transmission of microring-modulated BPSK, First Demonstration of 80-km Long-Haul Transmission of 12.5-Gb/s Data Using Silicon Microring Resonator Electro-Optic Modulator, First Experimental Bit-Error-Rate Validation of 12.5-Gb/s Silicon Modulator Enabling Photonic Networks-on-Chip. These academic results have been applied into products widely deployed at Cisco, Intel.
Application for computing and medical imaging Manipatruni, Lipson and collaborators at Intel have projected a roadmap that required the use of Silicon micro-ring modulators to meet the bandwidth, linear bandwidth density (bandwidth/cross section length) and area bandwidth density (bandwidth/area) of on-die communication links. While originally considered thermally unstable, by early 2020's micro-ring modulators have received wide adoption for computing needs at Intel Ayar Labs, Global foundries and varied optical interconnect usages.
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