IBM Makes a Super Memory Breakthrough

adeelarshad82 writes "IBM says they have made a significant leap forward in the viability of 'Racetrack memory,' a new technology design which has the potential to exponentially increase computing power. This new tech could give devices the ability to store as much as 100 times more information than they do now, which would be accessed at far greater speeds while utilizing 'much less' energy than today's designs. In the future, a single portable device might be able to hold as much memory as today's business-class servers and run on a single battery charge for weeks at a time. Racetrack memory works by storing data as magnetic regions (also called domains), which would be transported along nanowire 'racetracks.' Instead of forcing a computer to seek out the data it needs, as traditional computing systems do, the information would automatically slide along the racetrack to where it could be used."

Comments

"Breakthrough" Now a Meaningless Word

[eldavojohn]

Really? The summary doesn't even get around to explaining what the alleged "breakthrough" was. It's just trumpeting the awesomeness of race-track memory. From the article:

"We discovered that domain walls don't hit peak acceleration as soon as the current is turned on, and that it takes them exactly the same time and distance to hit peak acceleration as it does to decelerate and eventually come to a stop," commented Dr. Stuart Parkin, an IBM Fellow at IBM Research. "This was previously undiscovered in part because it was not clear whether the domain walls actually had mass, and how the effects of acceleration and deceleration could exactly compensate one another. Now we know domain walls can be positioned precisely along the racetracks simply by varying the length of the current pulses even though the walls have mass."

Don't get me wrong, race track memory is some pretty exciting stuff but I think we're dealing with an observation that means they can now proceed along a certain strategy for storing and retrieving bits. I don't think I would call this a breakthrough, it sounds like they set out to investigate domain walls and learned something. How is that a breakthrough? We're still in the ten to fifteen years away period which is that magic flying car period that, in many instances of exciting new technology, never seems to shrink.

"Breakthrough" no longer means anything to me. I don't know what you would have to put in the title to get me genuinely excited about a real breakthrough ... probably something like "Researchers Shitting Themselves Over New Discovery."

Re:"Breakthrough" Now a Meaningless Word

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I hear you.

I'm only on board with scientists are "baffled" or experts are "shocked."

Re:"Breakthrough" Now a Meaningless Word

[wealthychef]

Actually, the word "breakthrough" is pretty applicable here. There was this undiscovered property that acted as a barrier and prevented moving forward with the technology, but now that it is discovered, the barrier has been broken through and progress can continue. You might not be satisfied unless it's an announced product, and I'm with you there, but it's still a breakthrough in the technical sense of the word.

Re:"Breakthrough" Now a Meaningless Word

[SageMusings]

It's "Bubble Memory" all over again.

Re:"Breakthrough" Now a Meaningless Word

[santiagodraco]

Well I'd have to say that since you don't know what the breakthrough is, nor do you really appear to understand the technical issues involved (other than quoting words from the article)... I'm not sure you are really saying anything. Much like my post :)

Breakthrough's in science can be very simple things that move projects forward significantly. A breakthrough doesn't require a nuke going off, or a plane breaking a new mach record.... it could be as simple as what they state as to resolve an issue that was holding up the project for months.

Of course you might think what they did is "simple" and not breakthrough worthy, but that just demonstrates a lack of understanding for the difficulty in what they are working with.

You do understand we are talking about nano sized circuits here right?

Re:"Breakthrough" Now a Meaningless Word

[cowscows]

Yeah, it's interesting how every story about a new technology ends up full of comments about how it's not a big deal, how it only works in a lab, how any real applications are decades away, etc... yet there's new faster, better, cooler, more efficient, etc... products coming out all the time.

That's not to say that if someone starts crowing about their exciting new discovery that you should automatically rush in and invest all your money in it, but technology does actually move forward, and not everything is complete BS. And when you're talking about a company like IBM, who have a respectable history of research and invention, I'm generally inclined to believe that they're at least on the trail of something interesting, and not just throwing big words out to try and impress people.

Exponentially

[serviscope_minor]

I hate it when people misuse the word exponentially to mean big.

At best, it will allow the current exponential growth to increase.

Re:Exponentially

[mlts]

Correction, Adobe applications. It would be nice to be able to feed stuff large amounts of RAM addressable in nanoseconds, because it is a *lot* easier to throw more hardware at something than to get most vendors to tighten up their products.

Re:Not holding my breath

[TaoPhoenix]

Yeah, I'm getting too old for vaporware. Now I try only to pay attention to "on shelves now".

Re:Racetrack

[damien_kane]

No, it's not an ambi-turner.

Maybe someday, though, it may learn to, so that it can thwart the attempt on the Prime Minister of Malaysia's life.

P = NP

[drb226]

a new technology design which has the potential to exponentially increase computing power

P = NP

QED

Re:Racetrack Memory? Again?

[__aawbkb6799]

Can I ask Slashdot to not post any more stories ... until something interesting happens

you must be new here. low ID aside.

Five years

[TopSpin]

20 years

Please avoid careless speculation. The SPI of racetrack memory, as with other microelectronic breakthroughs is five years.

here's an idea

[LodCrappo]

why not connect the racetracks directly to the internet tubes. then the information could slide along the racetrack into a series of tubes and ultimately slide right into your own personal racetrack.

Yawn...

[olsmeister]

Here is a press release from a couple of years ago basically trumpeting the same thing. I think it is policy to recycle this every so often to prop up their stock price.

Re:Not holding my breath

[timeOday]

Then why read Slashdot? The Best Buy circular in the Sunday paper is what you are looking for.

I won't defend the rather confused writeup, but the research itself still sounds like genuine progress in a worthwhile area. Moore's Law, or rather the more general/important version that "computer stuff just keeps getting better," isn't a law of nature. Technology is moved forward a little at a time by just this type of research. And yes, most research goes nowhere. But the exceptions to that rule made the world what it is today.

Overpromise and underdeliver

[overshoot]

I'll be intrested when they have something like a DIMM form factor that is actually better than existing memory.

I'll be happy enough when it's up to competing with rotating memory, which is a lot more likely.
Serial memory is serial memory, and promising to replace Random Access Memory in latency-critical applications like main memory is just nonsense. Either the people putting out these claims are stupid or they think we are.

This is just bubble memory again

[DCFusor]

I guess the patent has finally run out on the original, which I played with in the early '70s for some military EE work I was doing then for a beltway bandit. Just a big bunch of shift registers moving magnetic "bubbles" or "domains" round and round. The thing had a (for the time) decent capacity and storage capability, for example, you could get just about floppy drive performance out of a chip (and some other parts to make all the clocks)....It was of course still far slower than the ram of the time.

To this old fart, it looks the same, just a different way to fab the thing. But hey what do I know?

One thing I do know. Current scientists aren't very well educated on what has gone before. About a year ago I saw the "breakthrough" development of a "plasma transistor" that I also had in a 1950's book on my shelf....happens pretty frequently these days. These guys are so specialized they don't even know the history of their own fields anymore, much less a broad history.

Reminds me of Hari Seldon and "the galactic empire is crumbling" to be frank. Not even up to Heinlein standards!

Re:This is just bubble memory again

[geekoid]

The break through isn't the technology, it's how they are going about it, or certain aspects of the technology. Like, does a domain have mass.

Seriously, you need to to think a bit more. It's like someone finding a away to make better rubber tires and all you can say is 'Tires? hell those where around 100 years ago, this isnt new at all. I guess these scientist don't know their history."

Re:This is just bubble memory again

[Angst Badger]

To this old fart, it looks the same, just a different way to fab the thing. But hey what do I know?

It is the same thing, but the scale is far different, with much the same consequences as going from discrete transistors to nanoscale transistors etched on silicon, i.e., it can (theoretically) store more data and retrieve it faster.

About a year ago I saw the "breakthrough" development of a "plasma transistor" that I also had in a 1950's book on my shelf...

I know what you mean. I was going through a mass-market encyclopedia of science from the 1960's the other day, and stumbled across an article promising that holographic memory was right around the corner.

To be fair, though, the basic principles of most of the technology we use today were discovered decades, sometimes centuries, before their current applications. Most of the time, several technologies have to reach a certain stage of development before any of them can be given practical applications, and even then, if there's no demand for the technology at the time, it can sit on the shelf even longer. Lasers, for example, were greeted by yawns when they were first invented ("Great, it's a visible-light maser. So what?"), but now most people own multiple laser-containing devices, in addition to their use as pointers and cat toys.

Anything that will foil the evil cloud!!!

[MarkvW]

If I can carry around all my data in a little pod, then all I'll need is access to input and output devices.

That would be far out. Thanks IBM, for the neat science fiction story of the day!

Racetrack memory isn't something new...

[the_rajah]

I worked on magnetic bubble memory at T.I. in the Dallas corporate research labs back in the mid-70s and it used a "racetrack" architecture where magnetic bubbles (domains) were stored in very long shift registers with the shifting accomplished by rotating magnetic fields. I hope it does better this time around.

Re:Racetrack

[Antisyzygy]

Finally I will have a cellphone the size of a cricket.

What happens if

[SnarfQuest]

I watch car races on TV for the same reason most people do. To see the crashes. What happens if the data in these memory chips fails to make the turn? Getting implaled by ones and zeros doesn't sound like much fun. I'm just glad we're not using Roman Numerals, because those dots on the i's flying about, and those x's look a lot like those Japanese surikans, and those L's winging around like boomerangs.

Just how safe are we?

Re:Racetrack Memory? Again?

[geekoid]

This was interesting. Determining whether or not the domains has mass is very exciting.

Just because you only care about crap that you can buy doesn't mean others aren't interested in scientific breakthroughs.

The pre-millennium jandrese called, he want's to know why you killed his curiosity.

20 years

[TopSpin]

The overwhelming consensus SPI for flying cars is twenty years.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2004/tc20040825_4462_tc119.htm
http://www.kurzweilai.net/forums/topic/why-flying-cars-are-a-long-way-off
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TuZyTN2xWuwJ:www.slideshare.net/RichStrong/magic-dragon-flying-car-project-presentation+flying+car+20+years+-%22your+flying+car+awaits%22&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://www.davinciinstitute.com/papers/where-is-my-flying-car/
http://www.cobizmag.com/articles/flying-cars-just-give-it-20-years-or-so/page-2/
http://markctu.blogspot.com/2007/08/failed-prediction-flying-car.html

Link to publication in Science

[perlith]

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6012/1810.abstract

Courtesy of a better writeup at:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9202379/IBM_s_racetrack_memory_moves_closer_to_the_checkered_flag?taxonomyId=147

In a paper published in the Dec. 24 issue of Science Magazine, the IBM researchers report that domain walls have mass and do indeed take a bit of time to speed up to peak velocity, and to slow down. Knowing this, they'll be able to move and retrieve data on a racetrack trip accurately. There's still a lot of work to be done before racetrack becomes a reality, but according to Parkin, the biggest questions -- whether an electric charge would move these domain walls, and whether or not they have mass -- have now been answered. Now the problems are more practical and less theoretical: how do you build a racetrack chip that works reliably with millions or even billions of these racetracks, for example. "Those are the questions that we can only address by building prototypes and testing them for a period of time," Parkin said.

And the official IBM press release:
https://www-304.ibm.com/jct03001c/press/us/en/pressrelease/33291.wss


I see more data center utilization for this technology rather than consumer devices. Be nice if I could get a home NAS on one of these in 5-10 years.