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."

Comments

Magnetic monopoles

[goombah99]

Since magnetic monopoles dont exist, you have to use magnetic dipoles or higher order moments. this translates in to macoscopic structures. It's hard to see how this could beat monopole electrons in size or group velocity. As for power consumption, it's true that magnetism can have low queiscent power consumption because of it's hysterises making it non-volatile. But you pay aprice for this when you have to switch it's state. on the other hand the ideal transistor consumes no power when it is not switching states. If you got rid of the hysteresis in magnetism to make it faster and lower power then it too will become volatile like electronics.

I can see how this could create dense active bulk storage, such as was done long ago with magnetic bubble memory. But I'm skeptical about a pure magnetic logic system beating electronics.

Moore's "law"

[Dan East]

As transistor-based microchips hit the limits of Moore's Law

The submitter speaks of Moore's law as if it were some actual law governing the physics of silicon based integrated circuits. His "law" was nothing more than an observation regarding the time it took the industry to pack more transistors into a given space. It makes no assertions regarding maximum transistor density, heat dissipation, or any of the other physical limitations chip manufacturers keep overcoming.

Dan East