Non-Conventional Computing using thermal and driven Skyrmion Dynamics

Skyrmions are magnetic whirls which exhibit quasiparticle-behavior, respond strongly nonlinear to external stimuli and have recently been shown to exhibit thermally activated dynamics. These properties open up possible future applications in computing architectures beyond von-Neumann computing. We propose and demonstrate experimentally a conceptually new approach to skyrmion reservoir computing that exploits the thermally activated diffusive motion of skyrmions. By confining the thermal and energetically low, electrically gated skyrmion motion, together with employing spatially resolved input and readout, we find that already a single skyrmion in a confined, triangular geometry suffices to realize non-linearly separable functions, which we demonstrate for the XOR gate along with all other Boolean logic gate operations. Beyond reservoir computing, we design and experimentally realize token-based and stochastic computing devices which also greatly benefit from thermal skyrmion dynamics.