Dalton Colombo
Computer Science
Dalton Colombo’s design is an innovative approach to increasing circuit efficiency, an idea with significant potential in electronics performance, especially regarding power consumption and manufacturing cost. Dalton began his academic journey in computer engineering at the Federal University of Itajubá and completed his master’s and doctorate in microelectronics at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. Part of his doctorate period was spent at the North American company Texas Instruments. In addition, he spent time as a visiting researcher in 2010 at the integrated circuits laboratory at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada. Currently a professor at the School of Engineering at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Dalton uses his free time for yoga, long waterfall swims and walks with Luna, his four-legged daughter.
Projects
This project aims to develop a new class of electronic circuits with the potential to be more efficient than traditional ones and suitable for some current computing applications, which, for example, require low energy consumption and low manufacturing costs.
These new electronic circuits use the time interval between electrical pulses to encode and process data. We call this approach time domain computing. This solution is interesting because it simultaneously combines the advantages of analogue and digital signal formats. In other words, we seek to process analogue information best through efficient digital circuits.
By proposing new CMOS electronic circuit topologies and attempting to perform data processing entirely in the time domain, this project investigates whether it is possible to change the current paradigm of electronic circuit operation and whether better hardware can be developed.
