216 research outputs found
FILM DEPOSITION AND MICROFABRICATION OF MAGNETIC TUNNEL JUNCTIONS WITH AN MgO BARRIER
Magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs), which consist of a thin insulation layer sandwiched by two ferromagnetic (FM) layers, are among the key devices of spintronics that have promising technological applications for computer hard disk drives, magnetic random access memory (MRAM) and other future spintronic devices. The work presented here is related to the development of relevant techniques for the preparation and characterization of magnetic films, exchanged biased systems and MTJs. The fabrication and characterization of PtMn/CoFe exchange biased systems and MTJs with Al-O barriers were undertaken when the new Aviza StratIon fxP ion beam deposition tool was developed by the project consortium funded by DTI MNT. After the Nordiko 9550 spintronic deposition tool was installed at Plymouth, the work focused on the development of MTJ multilayer stacks with layer structures of CoFeB/MgO/CoFe/IrMn and IrMn/CoFeB/MgO/CoFeB to achieve coherent tunneling with a crystalline MgO barrier. The film deposition, microfabrication, magnetic field annealing, microstructural and nano-scale characterization, magnetic and magneto-transport measurement for these devices have been systematically studied to achieve smooth interfaces and desired crystallographic textures and magnetic properties of layer stacks. Magnetoresistance (MR) of up to 200% was obtained from MTJs with a layer structure of Ta/CuN/Ta/CoFeB/MgO/CoFe/IrMn/Ta and a CuN bottom electrode. Enhanced exchange anisotropy from the bottom pinned IrMn/CoFeB stacks has been obtained, which demonstrated the possibility of fabricating MTJs with CoFeB as both the top and bottom FM electrodes with strong exchange bias. The origin of the enhanced exchange bias field was studied by employing high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) to examine the mmicrostructure properties and element specific magnetic properties of the stacks. Results demonstrate that the enhanced exchange anisotropy in the IrMn/CoFeB system is closely associated with the increased uncompensated interfacial spins. MTJs with layered structures of IrMn/CoFeB/MgO/CoFeB were prepared based on this exchange bias system. However, further work is required for the optimisation of the (001) crystallographic textures of the CoFeB/MgO/CoFeB stack to achieve coherent tunneling
High-Dimensional Stochastic Gradient Quantization for Communication-Efficient Edge Learning
Edge machine learning involves the deployment of learning algorithms at the
wireless network edge so as to leverage massive mobile data for enabling
intelligent applications. The mainstream edge learning approach, federated
learning, has been developed based on distributed gradient descent. Based on
the approach, stochastic gradients are computed at edge devices and then
transmitted to an edge server for updating a global AI model. Since each
stochastic gradient is typically high-dimensional (with millions to billions of
coefficients), communication overhead becomes a bottleneck for edge learning.
To address this issue, we propose in this work a novel framework of
hierarchical stochastic gradient quantization and study its effect on the
learning performance. First, the framework features a practical hierarchical
architecture for decomposing the stochastic gradient into its norm and
normalized block gradients, and efficiently quantizes them using a uniform
quantizer and a low-dimensional codebook on a Grassmann manifold, respectively.
Subsequently, the quantized normalized block gradients are scaled and cascaded
to yield the quantized normalized stochastic gradient using a so-called hinge
vector designed under the criterion of minimum distortion. The hinge vector is
also efficiently compressed using another low-dimensional Grassmannian
quantizer. The other feature of the framework is a bit-allocation scheme for
reducing the quantization error. The scheme determines the resolutions of the
low-dimensional quantizers in the proposed framework. The framework is proved
to guarantee model convergency by analyzing the convergence rate as a function
of the quantization bits. Furthermore, by simulation, our design is shown to
substantially reduce the communication overhead compared with the
state-of-the-art signSGD scheme, while both achieve similar learning
accuracies
Time-varying -model for dynamic directed networks
We extend the well-known -model for directed graphs to dynamic network
setting, where we observe snapshots of adjacency matrices at different time
points. We propose a kernel-smoothed likelihood approach for estimating
time-varying parameters in a network with nodes, from snapshots. We
establish consistency and asymptotic normality properties of our
kernel-smoothed estimators as either or diverges. Our results contrast
their counterparts in single-network analyses, where is
invariantly required in asymptotic studies. We conduct comprehensive simulation
studies that confirm our theory's prediction and illustrate the performance of
our method from various angles. We apply our method to an email data set and
obtain meaningful results
Capacity of Remote Classification Over Wireless Channels
Wireless connectivity creates a computing paradigm that merges communication
and inference. A basic operation in this paradigm is the one where a device
offloads classification tasks to the edge servers. We term this remote
classification, with a potential to enable intelligent applications. Remote
classification is challenged by the finite and variable data rate of the
wireless channel, which affects the capability to transfer high-dimensional
features and thus limits the classification resolution. We introduce a set of
metrics under the name of classification capacity that are defined as the
maximum number of classes that can be discerned over a given communication
channel while meeting a target classification error probability. The objective
is to choose a subset of classes from a library that offers satisfactory
performance over a given channel. We treat two cases of subset selection.
First, a device can select the subset by pruning the class library until
arriving at a subset that meets the targeted error probability while maximizing
the classification capacity. Adopting a subspace data model, we prove the
equivalence of classification capacity maximization to Grassmannian packing.
The results show that the classification capacity grows exponentially with the
instantaneous communication rate, and super-exponentially with the dimensions
of each data cluster. This also holds for ergodic and outage capacities with
fading if the instantaneous rate is replaced with an average rate and a fixed
rate, respectively. In the second case, a device has a preference of class
subset for every communication rate, which is modeled as an instance of
uniformly sampling the library. Without class selection, the classification
capacity and its ergodic and outage counterparts are proved to scale linearly
with their corresponding communication rates instead of the exponential growth
in the last case.Comment: Submitted to IEEE for possible publicatio
Comparative Transcriptome Analysis of Resistant and Susceptible Tomato Lines in Response to Infection by Xanthomonas perforans Race T3
Bacterial spot, incited by several Xanthomonas sp., is a serious disease in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.). Although genetics of resistance has been widely investigated, the interactions between the pathogen and tomato plants remain unclear. In this study, tanscriptomes of X. perforans race T3 infected tomato lines were compared to those of controls. An average of 7 million reads were generated with approximately 21,526 genes mapped in each sample post-inoculation at 6h (6 HPI) and 6d (6 DPI) using RNA-sequencing technology. Overall, the numbers of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were higher in the resistant tomato line PI 114490 than in the susceptible line OH 88119, and the numbers of DEGs were higher at 6 DPI than at 6 HPI. Fewer genes (78 in PI 114490 and 15 in OH 88119) were up-regulated and most DEGs were down-regulated, suggesting that the inducible defense response might not be fully activated at 6 HPI. Accumulation expression levels of 326 co-up regulated genes in both tomato lines at 6 DPI might be involved in basal defense, while the specific and strongly induced genes at 6 DPI might be correlated with the resistance in PI114490. Most DEGs were involved in plant hormone signal transduction, plant-pathogen interaction and phenylalanine metabolism, and the genes significantly up-regulated in PI114490 at 6 DPI were associated with defense response pathways. DEGs containing NBS-LRR domain or defense-related WRKY transcription factors were also identified. The results will provide a valuable resource for understanding the interactions between X. perforans and tomato plants
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