Center 1400 stands up
Electronic Device Technology department

Effective 12/3/2010, Center 1400 has restructured and renamed itself “Computing Research”.  Newly created Department 1425, “Advanced Device Technologies”, has the long-term objective of identifying and characterizing new bit-level devices and other technology that can serve as the foundation for beyond-Moore’s law computing expected in 10 to 15 years.

The creation of Department 1425 acknowledges that we are approaching the end of the “Moore’s law” roadmap for computing growth.  Department 1425’s goal is to enable continued increases in computer performance beyond the end of the current semiconductor technology roadmap.  The importance of high performance computing to our national security missions and the intrinsic value to the nation of leadership in advanced computing make this effort well-suited to Sandia.

Pursuit of “end-of-roadmap” device research requires the range of Sandia expertise in physics, materials, and microelectronics, as well as 1400’s contributions in computational and computer science.  Partnering and coordination among these Sandia R&D organizations will uniquely enable Sandia to make significant contributions in high performance computing technology in the end-of-roadmap period.

Specifically, Dept. 1425 comprises two technical concentrations:

• electrical device modeling from atomistic to component scales in support of:
• the QASPR program,
• high performance computing, in general, and progress toward exascale computing, in particular;
• Qubit and quantum architecture modeling and quantum algorithm development.

Our collaborative pursuit of R&D into new bit-level technology will proceed as time and resources permit after meeting needs of the NW program.  We also support broader Center 1400 pursuits, such as efficient, sustainable energy production and storage.

The range of expertise represented by the department staff include:

• Quantum electronic structure methods;
• Quantum chemistry;
• Molecular Dynamics methodology;
• Multiscale materials computational simulation methodology;
• Semiconductor device simulation (TCAD) with radiation effects;
• Semiconductor defect physics and chemistry;
• Hybrid quantum/classical device simulation (QCAD);
• Quantum computing architecture design;
• Qubit modeling;
• Qubit stabilization and quantum control;
• Programming for high performance, parallel, scientific computing applications in electronic structure and transport (both FEM and finite volume discretizations).