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Nanomagnets Could Replace Transistors in Microprocessors
redwolfe7707 writes "Computers today move electrons, using lots of energy in the process. A new report out of UC Berkeley shows that doing computing with nano magnetic domains could reduce the energy consumption by a factor of a million."
As usual, the factor of a million would be in the ideal case and is close to the minimum permitted by the universe.
Really, nanomagnets idea was tried before, and doesn't work well.
Goddamn Universe! Stop treating us like we're kids! We want over a million factor reduction in our power usage! Imma go in a corner and cry :'(
It's only 5 years away!
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Isnt it going to be more difficult to create a microprocessor with magnets? I mean nobody knows how they work...
Really, nanomagnets idea was tried before, but there are fundamental physics problems with it.
This is an interesting development. If it works out, great. If it does not work out, they learn from the failure. All technology must by its nature evolve or become outmoded and worthless. As we know Computers are the poster child for technology evolution. Many more attempts to approve computers, faster, more memory, faster disks, etc have failed then succeeded. To me it does not matter if it works, IT would be nice if it did, but it is not earth shaking if it fails.
How do they work?
or of a nervous disposition, or even those bored with the stupid Goatse image.
parent is Goatse
LK is on Slashdot! Why am I so surprised by this?
Really, nanomagnets idea was tried before, but there are fundamental physics problems with it.
Berzerkeley!!!
Flakes of the future: "hold your arthritic wrist up against the magnetic CPU while running this program". "Here is a bracelet consisting of 16 broken, yet magnetic PIC microcontrollers (oh sorry, I forgot microcontrollers did not exist before the ardweeno)"
That and I'm curious how the curie limit would affect those little things. The smaller they get the smaller the volume to hold heat, although the surface area to volume ratio improves as they shrink...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
how do you turn off a magnet?
Right in the This way to the colon hole !! Well played, JB !! When will those two ever learn !!
Really, nanomagnets idea was tried before, but there are fundamental physics problems with it.
They use FM.
* You know.... fucking magic.
No, thats what h4rr4r posts using his suck-puppet accounts.
I have seen him comment on the 'Goatse' links few times.
And since its highly unlikely that I have seen all Goatse links posted by him, and I see that he comments on them again, it must be him.
devices become more susceptible to random fluctuations from thermal effects, stray electromagnetic fields and other kinds of noise
Yes, I'm imagining a big sticker on my new magnetronic iphone, depicting a big horseshoe magnet with a diagonal line through it. Airport security suddenly has to have a separate X-ray-less inspection line for portable magnetronics.
At the moment, electrical currents are used to generate a magnetic field to erase or flip the polarity of nanomagnets, which dissipates a lot of energy. Ideally, new materials will make electrical currents unnecessary, except perhaps for relaying information from one chip to another
Nanomagnets are hardly impressive, everything is being made "nano" these days.
Efficient and reliable CONTROL of magnetic fields (e.g without moving electrons in an electromagnet) seems to be the critical missing piece to this puzzle.
Ok , data could be stored as a magnetic alignment, but how do you get that information from one side of the chip to the other when you need to actually use it? You can't transmit magnetism down a wire and if you use electrons then you're still going to have a large amount of wasted energy.
I like to imagine that I stay informed on science/tech stories and it seems like everyday I read about new tech and innovations.... but they never seem to be implemented in a desirable timeline. How come the big power consumers like Google, IBM and Microsoft haven't thrown loads of cash into these types of innovations? Early investments would certainly pay off in the long run- a million fold in energy efficiancy isn't good enough I guess.
I see no mention of CPU speed. I'm guessing it wouldn't be that great.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
they work by the exchange of photons created and absorbed by accelerating charges.
I know people have demonstrated magnetic domain nand and nor gates, which is theoretically sufficient to build anything. Has anyone demonstrated more complex devices? A synchronous shift register? An adder? Something that demonstrates that linking many gates together is viable?
Reality hacked by Anonymous. Universe found to be resting on back of large turtle. Film at 11:00.
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Fucking nanomiracles.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
... I could get a smartphone that will last a whole week on a charge?
Oh, how convenient: a theory about God that doesn't involve looking through a telescope.
There are other limits to computation.
Wouldn't a low energy computer be extremely slow?
According to the energy/time version of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, a small uncertainty in energy would mean a large uncertainty in time. Any measurable operation close to this limit would take an extremely long time to complete.
They've been saying this for 10 years. It's never going to happen. They just want more money for funding research.
That the 1,000,000X reduction in power doesn't take into acount the power consumption to control the surroundings of the magnets? Those nanomagnets would be pretty susceptible to changes in external fields I would think.