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New Material for Spintronics Discovered
Cpt_Corelli writes "Researchers at Uppsala University and the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology have discovered a new material with properties suitable for creating spintronic devices at room temperature. Previously this was only believed to be available at very low temperatures. The material is a combination of zinc oxide and manganite. The breakthrough is the cover item of the October issue of Nature Materials. If this new material proves viable for production there is an enormous potential for smaller and faster processors. Could this be the beginning of a new era in processor development?"
Please read the comment on the nature of the LOC unit. Thank you.
By the way, the number of electrons in a gram of phosphorous is about 2e22. Assuming 1 gram of the stuff on an monitor, and a 1600x1200 resolution, that's about 1e16 electrons per pixel, and assuming 1 bit per electron (somewhat beyond the state of today's spintronics, but not unimaginable), that's 1,250,000 Gb of data.
Enough for a few LOCs, I believe.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Once we get the faster processors, we'll find uses for them.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Um, do I have to?
I have a digital camera. I use it quite a bit. I _never_ edit the images, despite having the tools and ample computing power to do so. What I do is take a bunch of pictures, and throw away most of them. The rest I use in one way or another. Very few are actually saved semipermanently. And as far as I know, none in my circle of aquaintances edit their pictures either.
The mac-toting people I know have all enthused over the video editing tools they have. None of them have ever actually used them. Editing video is like editing still images, but much more demanding in time.
Doing SFX is even worse; it implies an artistic and narrative idea to be expressed, not just exposed. Like most of the people I know, I could not express myself out of a wet paper bag. I have no interest in actually creating movies, with or without FX, and I would likely shoot myself rather than being exposed to any creations from my normally talented (ie. no at all) friends. Holiday pictures are bad. Amateurishly edited holiday mmovies with cheesy special effects are enough to make people clinically depressed.
My point? This new "killer app" for more processor power isn't one. Great application - for the small minority that have the interest, talent and time to actually create stuff with it. A non-issue for the vast majority.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
. . . or composes their own music on their computer, the vast majority of it sucks.
But the fact that it allows anyone with the desire to get into it without a high "cost" of entry, that's a good thing. Used to be that everyone made their own music (no radio, no records), they didn't need a "professional" to do it for them. Yeah, not everyone was a Padrewski, or whatever, but they did it themselves, and they liked it, by gum. A little more of a do it yourself mentality wouldn't be a bad thing.
------ "Darn floor. Big bite." (Koko the gorilla's best attempt at explaining the experience of an earthquake.)
So in laymen terms, it's like twisting one end of a cable instead of jarring it up and down to produce a wave?