RSSIBM creates 'racetrack memory' for faster and cheaper storage
By Jacqueline Emigh | Published April 11, 2008, 6:53 PM
Will there ever come a day when a single handheld MP3 player can store 3,500 movies? IBM researchers think that a new technology called "racetrack" memory will make this possible within the next ten years.
Aside from performance, better relability and lower prices could be on the way, too. Unlike magnetic disk drives, racetrack memory has no moving parts. Moreover, unlike flash memory, it can be endlessly rewritten with no wear and tear, according to IBM Fellow Stuart Parkin and his colleagues at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California.
Instead, through a nanotechnology technique dubbed "spintronics," racetrack memory uses the "spin" of the electron to store data.
In an article in the April 11 issue of Science, the IBM researchers detail how they have managed to store information in columns of magnetic material, or "racetracks," arranged either perpendicularly or horizontally on the surface of a silicon wafer.
Racetrack memory takes advantage of the interaction of "spin polarized current" with magnetization in the "domain walls," or the boundaries between magnetic regions or "domains" in magentic materials. Essentially, data races around a wire "track" inside the silicon wafer, the IBM researchers say.
"Recent developments in the controlled movement of domain walls in magnetic nanowires by short pulses of spin-polarized current give promise of a nonvolatile memory device with the high performance and reliability of conventional solid-state memory but at the low cost of conventional magnetic disk drive storage," according to the abstract for the article in Science.
Ultimately, the researchers expect spintronics to move into the third dimension, with 3D racetrack memory devices that will be even faster and cheaper, since they won't be dependent on the miniaturization dictates of Moore's Law.
Finally someone has realize computers need a lot of RAM to run Acrobat Reader :)
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Foxit reader, man. Much better.
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3D mem. was pretty much a given but the racing aspect sounds kinda interesting. I'm just waiting for them to get more than a binary result from an electron.
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We have that, or didn't you hear?
http://www.techspot.com/...-quantum-processor.html
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Reads as being highly experimental and extremely specialized. Of course it may lead (or point) to something that's more viable for general purpose computing.
It just makes sense to stop trying to cram as many on/off light switches in as small a place as possible when you can add dimmers to those switches, thus making more possible states. I don't know exactly how feasible it is... (Waves/frequency? Speed? {scratch that one, that's stupid} Degrees of spin?) but matter and energy exhibit variables that consist of more than just binary states.
But I'm no physicist and I'm sure considerably more capable minds than my own have considered these and far more esoteric possibilities.
(Okay, I just wanted to ramble on for awhile and pretend like I know what I'm talking about... ~grin~)
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My point is proof of concept is here, now it just needs to be tweaked and mass produced.
Of course we won't see it until better forms of encryption are available, since it can theoretically break current high encryption algorithms in seconds/minutes flat.
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Larger and faster SSD drives on the way.
I don't know if this will work for standard ram but this would be great for SSD or Flash based storage.
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This sounds great to me. This would be cool if this technology can take the place of hard drives. It would have to be as fast and able to make at least 300GB+ storage.
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"a new technology called "racetrack" memory will make this possible WITHIN THE NEXT TEN YEARS"
By the time this reaches the consumer market, it'll have to be in the order of 10 TB (or about the size of your average Windows 8 install ... JUST KIDDING, don't flame me .. :P)
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what are the chances of applying this to solid-state hard drives? the speed of flash memory with an expected lifespan far beyond magnetic drives...
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I'd rather phrase it "What are the chances of NOT applying this to a new flavor of solid-state disks?" Virtually none. The minute these babies are technologically and economically feasible, we'll definetely see SSD's based on them
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