Computers That Are 100 Times Faster - IBM Moves Closer to New Class of Memory

Computers That Are 100 Times Faster, Virtually Unbreakable, And That Could Last For Decades – That’s What We Can Expect In The Next 8 Years According To IBM.

IBM have been working on a new type of technology called “racetrack” technology for years now, to incorporate into modern pc’s of the future. IBM estimates that this type of technology will be available within the next 8 years.

But what is it? What is “racetrack memory”? The technology has been given this name because of it’s ability to “race” information around a built-in wire track, which could ultimately lead to solid state electronic devices that have no moving parts, and yet have far more capacity to store data than today’s devices. Just to give an indication, a handheld device such as an mp3 player would for example be able to hold approximately half a million songs, or 3,500 movies – that would equate to roughly 100 times the storage capacity of a device of similar size in today’s terms. These devices would also use much less power, able to run on a single charge for possibly weeks at a time, and be able to last for decades.

For nearly fifty years, scientists have explored the possibility of storing information in magnetic domain walls, which are the boundaries between magnetic regions or “domains” in magnetic materials. Until now, manipulating domain walls was expensive, complex, and used significant power to generate the fields necessary to do so. In the paper describing their milestone, “Current Controlled Magnetic Domain-Wall Nanowire Shift Register,” Dr. Parkin and his team describe how this long-standing obstacle can be overcome by taking advantage of the interaction of spin polarized current with magnetization in the domain walls; this results in a spin transfer torque on the domain wall, causing it to move. The use of spin momentum transfer considerably simplifies the memory device since the current is passed directly across the domain wall without the need for any additional field generators.

The new technology will dramatically speed up boot times for pc’s and other devices.


This video below illustrates how the technology works.