New Speed Record For Magnetic Memory

Iddo Genuth writes "An experiment performed at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Germany has uncovered that a spin-torque switching of a nanomagnet is as fast as what is permitted according to the fundamental laws of physics' limit. This method of switching, also named ballistic switching, could allow for increased speeds in future non-volatile magnetic memories."

Comments

Re:Can we have some specifics?

[Fluffeh]

RTFA :)

By using the ballistic spin torque reversal, potential MRAMs could be programmed by current pulses quicker than 1 nanosecond and subsequently, achieving write clock rates well above 1 GHz. Thus, high-density and non-volatile memory executing at the clock rates of the fastest volatile memories were enabled.

Re:Oh, FFS.

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA says that this is MRAM which is basically like DDR/SDRAM except that it uses magnatism rather than capacitors/NAND latches to store the data.

This means nonvolatile RAM (Passwords/private key offline scraping FTW) or it could actually be used in SSDs if it is significantly faster/cheaper than flash chips.

Re:Oh, FFS.

[adrianwn]

Actually, it's more like a replacement for the "DRAM"-part in "(DDR-)SDRAM": "DRAM" describes the underlying memory technology, while "synchronous" describes the interface method (the results are returned on the edges of the clock signal). So the product will probably be called "SMRAM" or "DDR-SMRAM".

Re:Neat...

[kesuki]

the music industry was still highly reliant upon tubes to this date, there are still suppliers of tubes for use in the music industry, even though CDs are all digital. some artists insist that the use of tubes changes the way audio sounds before it's sampled by the digitizer... and of course, there are those who still release music on vinyl.