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

Re:Minor progress in materials science.

[MichaelKristopeit 66]

It's stuff like this that gives nanotechnology a bad name.

you're talking about the ignorant story summarizing spinsters and the brain-dead slashdot editors, right?

slashdot = stagnated

Re:Bootless a reality already

[LingNoi]

Linux Desktop is nothing like Microsoft's offerings. You've obviously never tried it which makes you unqualified to talk about it. Go back to your Commodore troll.

Re:Graphene Revolution

[TheRaven64]

Hmm. Two pints of beer or electricity for a device I'm not using. Tough call.

Two pints of beer per year, for not having to wait a few minutes every time you want to use the device. And that's assuming that it has 5 times the standby power usage of my (four year old) laptop.

(Anyway, not all of the computers I run are "modern devices").

I also have a couple of seven year old machines that I use; they have similar power usage when in standby. If they've been in standby for more than a couple of days, they go into suspend-to-disk mode, where the power draw is zero (RAM is no longer powered).

Given how cheap machines of that vintage are (i.e. it's difficult to even give them away these days), there's little justification for using anything older.