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IBM Makes First Racetrack Memory Chip

Posted by Soulskill on from the write-fast-read-left-write-fast-read-left dept.

holy_calamity writes "For several years, we've followed the progress of IBM's revolutionary 'racetrack' memory, which stores data inside nanowires for several years. Now Big Blue has made the first prototype integrated onto a single chip, using the CMOS processing technique used in commercial chip fabs. It's still a research prototype, but goes some way to validate IBM's claim that the technology could be commercialized."

3 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. Re:IBM rules by The+Askylist · · Score: 1, Informative

    All well and good, but "racetrack" memory, when all is said and done, is just a reimplementation of the mercury delay lines that were used for storage in the Leo machines back in the 1950s.

    Different, but still the same concept of cycling the bits round a circuit and reading them sequentially.

    I'd shout "Prior Art" at it.

  2. Re:Dec 2010 Slashdot Comments by Rockoon · · Score: 4, Informative

    And here we sit 12 months later with a functioning CMOS chip that stores only one bit per wire instead of actually being racetrack memory.

    There, fixed that for you.

    --
    "His name was James Damore."
  3. Re:IBM rules by swillden · · Score: 5, Informative

    When I was at IBM they admitted that they mostly used the patents to defend against lawsuits from other companies which were claiming infringement with their own patents.

    Mmm, I think you misunderstood, or the presentation only addressed one sort of patents. IBM makes lots of money from licensing its patents. There is a difference, though, which is that the patents that IBM licenses (by and large, there may be exceptions) are "legitimate". They're real, serious advances in the art which are of real value to their licensees, and not something that any random engineer would come up with off the top of their head when faced with a similar problem. Most of the patents IBM licenses for big bucks are for things like lithography processes, techniques for increasing disk storage density... and this racetrack memory.

    I no longer work for IBM, but I did spend 14 years there and while I have many (many!) other criticisms of the company, I think their approach to patents is a good one.

    --
    Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.