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New Material for Spintronics Discovered

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the science-is-cool dept.

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?"

2 of 225 comments (clear)

  1. Re:MOD POST AS "SPECULATIVE" by heironymouscoward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  2. Re:50Ghz processors... by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 4, Insightful
    work in industrial modelling, or SFX and animation.
    Don't forget, faster processing and faster hardware is what may allow everyone to do things with SFX and high-end animation. The same happened with video editing, CAD, real-time audio processing etc. etc; at one time these were things for high-end computers too expensive for the hobbyist, but these days everyone is doing them.

    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...