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"Colossal Magnetic Effect" Could Lead To Another Breakthrough In Storage Tech
Bryant writes "Scientists with the Carnegie Institution for Science have discovered what could bring yet another massive advance in memory and storage. The discovery, a magnetoresistence literally 'up to 1000 times more powerful' than the Giant Magnetoresistence Effect discovered roughly 20 years ago, which led to one of the major breakthroughs in memory, seems to be a result of high-pressure interactions between Manganites. Manganites aren't new to this game; MRAM uses Manganite layers to achieve the Magnetic Tunnel Effect needed to keep the state of memory stable. Applying significant amounts of pressure to known tech-useful materials isn't a new trick; you might recall the recent breakthrough with Europium superconductivity thanks to similar high-pressure antics."
This discovery seems to still be in the very preliminary stages. It is premature to conclude that this will lead to substantial improvements. Putting things under high pressure is difficult and keeping them under high pressure is really hard (although from my minimal physics understanding it looks like this could be used to assist in low pressure situations also).
One thing is certain. If this does lead to improvement in memory we'll have a few months of people asking whatever they could do with all that memory. And then a few years after they'll complain that it isn't enough.
The problem isn't storage its speed. Really with 1TB of HD space there isn't anything you can't have a lot of. On the other hand I/O, especially magnetic I/O is the main bottleneck. Storage isn't a problem.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Argonne, ILâ"Millions of people today carry around pocket-sized music players capable of holding thousands of songs, thanks to the discovery 20 years ago of a phenomenon known as the âoegiant magnetoresistance effect,â which made it possible to pack more data onto smaller and smaller hard drives. Now scientists are on the trail of another phenomenon, called the âoecolossal magnetoresistance effectâ (CMR) which is up to a thousand times more powerful and could trigger another revolution in computing technology. Understanding, and ultimately controlling, this effect and the intricate coupling between electrical conductivity and magnetism in these materials remains a challenge, however, because of competing interactions in manganites, the materials in which CMR was discovered. In the June 12, 2009, issue of the journal Physical Review Letters, a team of researchers report new progress in using high pressure techniques to unravel the subtleties of this coupling.
To study the magnetic properties of manganites, a form of manganese oxide, the research team, led by Yang Ding of the Carnegie Institutionâ(TM)s High Pressure Synergetic Center (HPSync), applied techniques called x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) and angular-dispersive diffraction at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) of Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. High pressure XMCD is a newly developed technique that uses high-brilliance circularly polarized x-rays to probe the magnetic state of a material under pressures of many hundreds of thousands of atmospheres inside a diamond anvil cell.
The discovery of CMR in manganite compounds has already made manganites invaluable components in technological applications. An example is magnetic tunneling junctions in soon-to-be marketed magnetic random access memory (MRAM), where the tunneling of electrical current between two thin layers of manganite material separated by an electrical insulator depends on the relative orientation of magnetization in the manganite layers. Unlike conventional RAM, MRAM could yield instant-on computers. However, no current theories can fully explain the rich physics, including CMR effects, seen in manganites.
âoeThe challenge is that there are competing interactions in manganites among the electrons that determine magnetic properties,â said Ding. âoeAnd the properties are also affected by external stimuli, such as, temperature, pressure, magnetic field, and chemical doping.â
âoePressure has a unique ability to tune the electron interactions in a clean and theoretically transparent manner,â he added. âoeIt is a direct and effective means for manipulating the behavior of electrons and could provide valuable information on the magnetic and electronic properties of manganite systems. But of all the effects, pressure effects have been the least explored.â
The researchers found that when a manganite was subjected to conditions above 230,000 times atmospheric pressure it underwent a transition in which its magnetic ordering changed from a ferromagnetic type (electron spins aligned) to an antiferromagnetic type (electron spins opposed). This transition was accompanied by a non-uniform structural distortion called the Jahn-Teller effect.
âoeIt is quite interesting to observe that uniform compression leads to a non-uniform structural change in a manganite, which was not predicted by theory,â said Ding, âoeWorking with Michel van Veenendaalâ(TM)s theoretical group at APS, we found that the predominant effect of pressure on this material is to increase the strength of an interaction known as superexchange relative to another known as the double exchange interaction. A consequence of this is that the overall ferromagnetic interactions in the system occur in a plane (two dimensions) rather than in three dimensions, which produces a non-uniform redistribution of electrons. This leads to the structural distortion.â
Another intriguing response of manganite to high p
I don't think I'd be complaining much about huge amounts of cheap storage.
However I'd complain about low bandwidth and high latency.
Imagine if you have 100TB drives but they only do sequential transfers at 200MB/sec and are still stuck at about 10milliseconds access time (7200rpm).
What that means: it'll take 6 days to transfer 100TB at 200MB/sec, and random transfer speeds will be about as crap as now (1-2MB/sec).
seems to be a result of high-pressure interactions between Manganites. Manganites aren't new to this game
For shame /. No comments or jokes on the obvious? Its right there for the taking.
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
How about the "Super-Hyper-Colossal-Magnetoresistence Effect?"
At some point, you run out of superlatives and need to go Exponential:
Magneto X 10^Super-Hyper-Colossal
-S
When I did a presentation on hard drives 3 years ago, I had already read some things saying that the Colossal Magnetorsestive Effect was the next step in read-write head technology. The Wikipedia page says the effect was discovered in 1993. This new discovery might make it more feasible, but hard drive technology developers already knew that CMR would be a part of the technology going forward.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.