IBM Claims Spintronics Memory Breakthrough

CWmike writes with this excerpt from 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. Spintronics has long faced an intrinsic problem because electrons have only held an 'up or down' orientation for 100 picoseconds. A picosecond is one trillionth of a second [one thousandth of a nanosecond.] One hundred picoseconds is not enough time for a compute cycle, so transistors cannot complete a compute function and data storage is not persistent. In the study published in Nature, IBM Research and the Solid State Physics Laboratory at ETH Zurich 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."

RRDRAM?

[jeffb (2.718)]

That's some really, really dynamic RAM. Don't skip a refresh cycle.

but did they patent it?

[Anonymous Coward]

if so fuck 'em! doing advanced research and then expecting to get paid for it is just fucking bullshit! if samsung and google can't steal it then it ain't fair! FUCK IBM!

etch a sketch?

[slashmydots]

If they're relying on the simple rotation of a very tiny particle, couldn't I then significantly erase parts of my SSD by simply shaking it? In other words, erase it like an etch a sketch? :-P I mean how hard I can shake it compared to the mass and energy of a tiny spinning particle, it could start spinning a different way, right? That and ionizing radiation in any tiny dose would blow apart all your data. Get read for an SSD and RAM sticks cased in lead.

Re:Was it really necessary...

[petteyg359]

I don't see any cone intersections in his text. Perhaps you meant ellipsis...

Re:Was it really necessary...

[timeOday]

Put another way, if 100 slashdotters had to answer the question "pico = 10^x", does anybody really think we'd all get it right?

Re:Was it really necessary...

[Jade_Wayfarer]

1 hectoslashdotter cannot be wrong!

Re:Was it really necessary...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see any cone intersections in his text. Perhaps you meant ellipsis...

I do. Indeed, I see four of them in your comment.

Re:Was it really necessary...

[cellocgw]

Queue the Metric/Imperial Wars:

So "Queue" is the metric equivalent of "Cue" ?