Researchers for the computer giant are working on a technology known as racetrack memory which uses tiny magnetic boundaries to store data. The team at IBM's Almaden lab in California outline ways to make the building blocks of the novel storage medium.The capacity of MP3 players could increase 100 times from present levels.But the IBM team say racetrack memory is still seven to eight years away from commercial use.
The work being done on racetrack memory by Dr Parkin and colleagues could produce a storage medium that is cheap, durable and fast. Currently Most desktop computers use flash memory and hard drives.
"It's now possible to build a racetrack memory though we've not built one yet," - said Dr Stuart Parkin, an IBM fellow at the Almaden laboratory.
The racetrack memory stores data in the boundaries, known as domain walls, between magnetic regions in nanowires. The medium gets its name because the data races around the wire or track as it is read or written.
The domain walls are read by exploiting the weak magnetic fields generated by the spin of electrons. The tiny amounts of power needed to exploit these fields means racetrack memory generates far less heat than existing devices.
The team has also shown how to fabricate the slim wires that would form the racetracks on which data is stored. If the expected data densities of the technology are realised it could mean gadgets that have about 100 times more memory on board than is possible today. It would mean that a portable MP3 player could hold up to 500,000 songs.
Racetrack memory could replace both flash and hard drives in computers and other gadgets.
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Hi
ReplyDeleteSince you write about IBM here, you might be interested to hear about the recent project carried out by Duke University about how the Apple logo inspires creativity more than the IBM logo.
But I think they fail to establish what they mean by creativity. IBM is very much about coming up with complicated computer systems (and complicated IT and business solutions in general). Your article, here is a good example of this (about the sort of thing IBM are about). What I might call lateral-minded thinking (as opposed to raw creativity). Yes Apple is about technology but it is technology very much about design. This to me is a different kind of creativity to what IBM is about (and about what the IBM logo represents).
Any thoughts on this?!