Will this technology soon replace SDDs? (Image: Adobe Stock -Sergey | Flaticon)
Imagine a computer that can transfer and store data up to 1,000 times faster and use even less energy: “Racetrack Memory”.
Sounds like science fiction? Perhaps, but researchers at the University of Oxford have made a discovery that takes us a giant step in that direction Nature Materials reports.
By the way, this isn’t the only research breakthrough in the area of storage and data transfer that we’ve told you about recently. Researchers at Stanford University are also working on a new type of memory for your computers:
Tiny magnetic vortices as a new information highway
The researchers have discovered a way to create magnetic vortices in membranes and connect them to the technology of our conventional computers.
The vortices can reach speeds of several kilometers per second and could therefore make data transfers in the computer 100 to 1,000 times faster than before because the computer interprets them as ones and zeros.
They also only span a few nanometers, making them about the size of a millionth of a millimeter.
The vortices are sent over a magnetic track and represent zeros and ones and can therefore function as bits and bytes. (Image: Phys.org)
This idea is not new, but until now there has been one crucial problem, as Doctor Hariom Jani, leader of the research project, describes:
»We looked at harnessing magnetic vortices in a special class of materials called antiferromagnets, which are 100-1000 times faster than modern devices. The problem so far has been that these vortices can only be created on rigid crystal templates that are incompatible with current silicon technology. Our goal was therefore to find a way to transfer these exotic vortices to silicon«
Scientists have now managed to find this way.
Rust makes it possible
How did the breakthrough happen? The key to success was the development of a new method for producing free-standing, extremely thin membranes from hematite.
Hematite is an iron-containing material that can be described as a type of rust or, more specifically, iron oxide. It has the desired magnetic properties that allow the vortices to be connected using silicon technology.
Hematite is formed by the oxidation of iron. But be careful: not all rust is the same. So if you see rust, that doesn’t mean it’s hematite. (Image: Wikipedia)
“Such membranes are relatively new in the world of crystalline quantum materials and combine the advantageous properties of 3D ceramics and 2D materials, but are also easily transferable.”
-Doctor Hariom Jani
What do fast whirls bring us in the PC?
This new technology promises several advantages: data processing will be many times faster, power consumption will decrease significantly and the magnetic vortices can even be shaped three-dimensionally. This opens up completely new possibilities for the development of extremely fast computers.
Researchers even dream of computers that, thanks to this technology, work in a similar way to the human brain, as Dr. Jani reveals:
“Ultimately, such devices could be integrated into new types of computers that are more similar to the human brain – we are very excited about what comes next.”
Such systems could, for example, take artificial intelligence to a completely new level.
When will the hematite swirl through my computer? There has been no concrete information on this so far. It will still be some time before we can work with these super-fast computers. However, basic research provides promising results and gives us hope for more.
