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'Racetrack' Memory Could Replace Hard Drives?
Galactic_grub writes "An experimental new type of memory that uses nanosecond pulses of electric current to push magnetic regions along a wire could dramatically boost the capacity, speed and reliability of storage devices. Magnetic domains are moved along a wire by pulses of polarized current, and their location is read by fixed sensors arranged along the wire. Previous experiments have been disappointing, but now researchers have found that super-fast pulses of electricity prevent the domains from being obstructed by imperfections in the crystal."
...they've updated coil memory.
I remember reading some research a couple of years ago that somethign similar was done using 100km of optical fibre and a router programmed to keep sending the same stuff around the loop, or it could read it/write it as it came around.
In some ways being slower is definitely an advantage, even with 100km at 10Gb/s you don't have much storage when the bits are moving at the speed of light.
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stores 1 bit per "core." The article is about a form of memory which continually cycles multiple bits stored as magnetic regions through a single physical ring. The OP is correct in that this is similar to cycling photons through an optical ring.
Looking back, this is all very similar to shift register memory, one of the earliest forms of solid state memory.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
It's Shigawire!
This will bring us one step closer to the Dune Universe. I call dibs on the first load of Spice!
I understand the need for air to keep the head flying off the surface of the platter. What I don't understand is the need to have a hole to exchange the air with the outside. Can't they just fill it with neutral gas at the optimum pressure and seal the damn thing ? I say that because I've used hard drive at high altitude and they FAIL often. I mean, if they can do it with salad, why can't they do it to HDs ?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
That reminds me of something I'd almost forgotten; the first Amstrad PC clones (*) that my Dad had at work required you to run a utility to "manually" park the heads on the hard drive before you powered down. Or maybe I'm remembering it wrong.
(*) Amstrad is a British company who (amongst other things) sold the first *really* successful PC clones on the UK market.
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Am I the only one reminded of Acoustic Delay Line Memory by this?
I wish! I understand Mel *exactly*. Squeezing the last bit of performance and efficiency is heaven. It is an almost useless skill nowadays, and I don't do it any more on that level, but I sure wish ....
Infuriate left and right
At least it'll make a crash a lot more fun to watch.
Have gnu, will travel.
Short-term memory uses some sort of an active feedback process. It has to change quickly and easily, so it has no choice. I suspect itinvolves a static latch rather than a loop, but you never know, there are lots of unexplained oscillations in the brain. Unfortunately it uses a lot of neurons so you don't get much of it, and tends to lose information quickly.
Long-term memory works by chemically altering proteins at synapses.
In the last year or so there was a paper about learning in rats. The scientists wired a few electrodes up to individual nerves in the rat's brain, then ran it through a maze and watched the nerves pulse. Afterwards they happened to leave the machine running and were astonished to see the same sequence of pulses as when the rat went through the maze, but replayed backwards.
I understand completely. My thing is 8-bit MCUs, and there's nothing like the satisfaction of coming up with some elegant, tight construct where not a byte or cycle is wasted. And there's a real economic incentive for that sort of optimization, too - I'm running my code on chips that cost $1.68 each, and doing things that my competitors might use a $6 ARM chip or $20 Java module for.