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Spintronics in your Future?

Posted by michael on from the they-do-it-with-magnets dept.

slugfro writes: "Do faster boot times and RAM that maintains memory after shutdown sound interesting? This article by a Science Magazine author details the study of utilizing the spin of electrons rather than just the charge in electronic devices (hence the name 'Spintronics'). Anyone out there researching this or have more info?" We do a story about MRAM every four months or so, and each time commercial development is a few years in the future. :)

6 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Some Linkage by Green+Aardvark+House · · Score: 4, Informative

    An Intro to Spintronics - Univ. of Maryland

    Article on Unisci about research into electronic spin in electronic devices

  2. More info here... by xmda · · Score: 2, Informative
    Spintronics, or spin electronics, refers to the study of the role played by electron (and more generally nuclear) spin in solid state physics, and possible devices that specifically exploit spin properties instead of or in addition to charge degrees of freedom. For example, spin relaxation and spin transport in metals and semiconductors are of fundamental research interest not only for being basic solid state physics issues, but also for the already demonstrated potential these phenomena have in electronic technology (some short reviews). The prototype device that is already in use in industry as a read head and a memory-storage cell is the giant-magnetoresistive (GMR) sandwich structure which consists of alternating ferromagnetic and nonmagnetic metal layers. Depending on the relative orientation of the magnetizations in the magnetic layers, the device resistance changes from small (parallel magnetizations) to large (antiparallel magnetizations). This change in resistance (also called magnetoresistance) is used to sense changes in magnetic fields. Recent efforts in GMR technology have also involved magnetic tunnel junction devices where the tunneling current depends on spin orientations of the electrodes.

    More of this here: http://www.physics.umd.edu/rgroups/spin/intro.html

  3. Photocanonic Storage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    The new technology call photocanonic storage is sort of along the same lines as this.

    With photocanonic's the bits of data are fired via a microscopic light canon toward the reading head. The head does not move at all and no mechanical moving parts are required. The idea I guess is to bring the data to the head instead of using the head to scan for data.

  4. Boot times probably would not change much by Marrow · · Score: 1, Informative

    The boot up time of current computer systems takes a long time because it is doing a lot of different things: 1. Power On Self Test 2. Memory Test 3. Waiting for Devices to power up and "settle" 4. Finding first available device 5. IPL from first available device 6. Setup the processor and address spaces 7. Switch to protected mode ( Intel ) 8. Search for more devices 9. Wait for devices to settle / initialize 10. Start initial program loader 11. Run startup scripts 12. Run network startup ( wait for dhcp ) 13. Initialize Graphics System A reboot would still have to perform many of these steps whether or not the Ram remembered the previous state. Since whats in Ram is dependent on what devices are present and what addreses are assigned, you would probably have to wipe the ram on each boot anyway.

  5. What the hell?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    What the hell is photocanonics? There is no such thing!

  6. It's a technology maturity problem by JGski · · Score: 2, Informative
    First, it isn't related to Quantum Computing. It's just a regular old nonvolatile memory.

    The technology works real nice. I did technology development project management for the Air Force in the late 80s on this and other wild-ass NVM technologies. MRM is very sound, just too pricey for commercial use yet. The problem is that the manufacturing economics combined with market perceived risk keeps it from prime time. Flash (the next nearest alternative) is more mature, more familiar and comfortable (derived from EPROM and E^2PROM technologies which are 25-plus years old) dispite its speed and endurance shortcomings.