IBM Claims "Spintronics Memory" Breakthrough

[JFN1]

Computerworld - In a paper set to be published this week in the scientific journal Nature, IBM researchers are claiming a huge breakthrough in spintronics, a technology that could significantly boost capacity and lower power use of memory and storage devices.

Spintronics, short for "spin transport electronics," uses the natural spin of electrons within a magnetic field in combination with a read/write head to lay down and read back bits of data on semiconductor material.

By changing an electron's axis in an up or down orientation - all relative to the space in which it exists -- physicists are able to have it represent bits of data. For example, an electron on an upward axis is a one; and an electron on a downward axis is a zero...(snip)

Spintronics has long faced an intrinsic problem because electrons have only held an "up or down" orientation for 100 picoseconds...not enough time for a compute cycle...(snip)

In the study published in Nature, IBM...announced they had found a way to synchronize electrons, which could extend their spin lifetime by 30 times to 1.1 nanoseconds, the time it takes for a 1 GHz processor to cycle.

Amazing stuff. And apparently, Moore's Law lives on...and on...and on.

Science is so freaking cool.

[longship]

1. Quantum Electrodynamics is so cool!

R&K

[Confusious]

2. Moores law isn't "living on"

It's actually been slowing. Transister densities are only going to double every 3 years, and they might slow even more, becuase they're having to pull tricks to get transistors packed in. Looking at video cards, the die size has actually been growing, not staying the same or getting smaller, as it would if moores "observation" still held.