One Step Closer To Speedier, Bootless Computers

CWmike writes "Physicists at the University of California at Riverside have made a breakthrough in developing a 'spin computer,' which would combine logic with nonvolatile memory, bypassing the need for computers to boot up. The advance could also lead to super-fast chips. The new transistor technology, which one lead scientist believes could become a reality in about five years, would reduce power consumption to the point where eventually computers, mobile phones and other electronic devices could remain on all the time. The breakthrough came when scientists at UC Riverside successfully injected a spinning electron into a resistor material called graphene, which is essentially a very thin layer of graphite. The graphene in this case is one-atom thick. The process is known as 'tunneling spin injection.' A lead scientist for the project said the clock speeds of chips made using tunneling spin injection would be 'thousands of times' faster than today's processors. He describes the tech as a totally new concept that 'will essentially give memory some brains.'"

Comments

Nonsense....

[gweihir]

Unless you live in backward MS country, booting is already only for adding new hardware or changing the kernel (on servers) and saving power (on desktops and laptops). Linux machines routinely get uptimes > 1 year. I personally had 400 days on a well-used Linux server 5 years ago.

If you live on MS island, however, regular booting will not go away for a long, long time, because the long-term stability is just not there. I highly doubt that MS has the competence to create it in the first place, as they have now consistently failed over a number of OS incarnations. And think of all the occasions where they want a reboot. Think that is for show? I don't. I think this is th expression f a fundamentally flawed OS design.

So whether you run Windows or a real OS, "bootless" computers are either not feasible or not needed at all. Another group of "scientists" bringing things to the world that nobody needs.