Slashdot Mirror
The Quest for the Spin Transistor
Daktaklakpak writes: "Found this interesting article on the IEEE Spectrum. It details the different attempts to make transistors based on electronic spin. Apparently, this technology is related to the MRAM that we've been hearing so much about."
If a whole computer platform could be developed using spintronics, we would be no longer be bound by a binary system. Even a trinary system would give itself a seven fold speed increase.
But that would require radical thinking and a complete redesign of the computer industry, which could take decades (plus a week for someone to port linux to it).
AWG
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
Article mentions ferromagnetics cross polarised as a switch, a memory cell.
;)
If you cool Xenon to around 0k, it becomes an Einstein condensate-the atoms align and act as one.(Don't have link handy, search will prolly churn plenty) The idea is coherence, just as a laser aligns all it's photons polarizations. It sounds like they have learned how to do this on an atomic level. From what I also understand, domains(think quantized magnet 'particle') tends to degrade unless they are cooled/remain undisturbed.
It does sound like a neat idea, flip an electron without having to take it anywhere, then you don't need a conductor, only a 'resonating structure' to channel the effect somewhere.
Also mentioned is the fact it has no gain, too bad, everything we interface with needs amplification in order to operate. Even your retinas send cascades of electrons with only a single photon. If they can solve the gain problem, this would seem like one of those Moore's Law things, but I wonder how they hold up against stray magnetic/electric fields?
Also mentioned is the energy stored,(n*2+1)/2, which suspiciously sounds like the energy levels of the electrons, ignoring the spins. Even that could be used to store information, but it would certainly be a bugger to keep the electron from transferring the energy.
If they can come up with something equivalent to hi-temp superconductors for spins, I see alot of good coming, just not this week
This mind intentionally left blank.
The KKK a bunch of sheetheads? You decide!
... from the subject line I thought this story was going to be about the quest for a product which would take a company's press release and translate the PR spin into something meaningful... ... and here I was thinking we might be onto something truly useful ;-)
Here is another article about electronic spin based computing. It clearly explains, toward the end, what will be the practical applications of those experiments.
I can't have been the only one to think of Flux Capacitor, can I?
<pun> I guess all those PHD's mentioned in the article would be spin doctors... </pun>
Anybody want a peanut?
If something works off of spin, wouldn't we have to build a mirror image of one for use in Australia and New Zealand? I mean, toilets and sinks and drinking fountains spin the other direction down there, so wouldn't electrons too?
*smile*
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Has anyone read James Bliss' "Cities in Flight"? Great sf, if you remember what year it was written. The story is based on the discovery of some weird things you supposedly could do to electron spin, enabling complete cities to enter interstellar space, using a machine called a spindizzy. Oh well, off topic probably. It's just that the article reminded me of the book.
karma capped
That right, don't slander the man whose ego allowed Bush in office!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on