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Magnetic Processors - Computing's New Future?
metalcoat writes "For the first time researchers have created a working prototype of a radical new chip design based on magnetism instead of electrical transistors. As transistor-based microchips hit the limits of Moore's Law, a group of electrical engineers at the University of Notre Dame has fabricated a chip that uses nanoscale magnetic "islands" to juggle the ones and zeroes of binary code.
Wolfgang Perod and his colleagues turned to the process of magnetic patterning (.pdf) to produce a new chip that uses arrays of separate magnetic domains. Each island maintains its own magnetic field. Because the chip has no wires, its device density and processing power may eventually be much higher than transistor-based devices. And it won't be nearly as power-hungry, which will translate to less heat emission and a cooler future for portable hardware like laptops."
"For the first time researchers have created a working prototype of a radical new chip design..."
I thought this had already happened when they moved from straight cut to crinkle cut??
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
Will these new processors work when the Earth's magnetic field eventually flip over?
pretty cool--I hope they've patented it!
I bet _somebody_ has...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Electicity... magnetism... Bah. Show me a processor working entirely by gravity!
I degaussed the monitor on the cart in the computer room and reset every processor in the compute farm!
...and next you'll be telling me that tabletop fusion has been discovered, there are parasitic viruses that alter the host's behavior, and that someone invented the plasma drive at NASA. You're ready to swallow all that pseudoscience and yet you all deny me when I try to inform you about the return of the Niburu and Planet X by the great Zecharia Sitchin!!! It's unbelievable just how gullible the Slashdot crowd is and how blind they are to honest truth.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Don't put that subwoofer next to my computer!
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Politician: What good are magnetic devices?
Pithy Scientist: Sir, in 20 years, you'll be taxing them.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
...demagnitizer....
Oh my, I'm seeing spots, sun spots...
A new lower power level of EMP weapons has been announced, following the announcement of the first commercial Magnetic computing....