"Racetrack memory is an exciting and highly innovative concept that builds upon IBM's significant accomplishments in the research and development of nanomaterials and nanodevices based on the manipulation of spin-polarized electrical current," commented Dr. T.C. Chen, IBM Fellow and VP of science and technology for IBM Research, in a statement.

In April, IBM said its racetrack memory research could lead to electronic devices capable of storing far more data in the same amount of space than is possible today, with extremely fast boot times, lower cost with stability and durability.

The joint development team is led by Parkin and ITRI's VP Dr. Ian Chan and will study new materials and structures for racetrack memory that the parties expect could lead to a paradigm shift in storage and memory technologies.

"We expect that our exploration of a wide variety of materials and structures will provide new insight into the dynamics of racetrack memory, making possible an entirely new class of information storage devices. This could change the design of information processing systems," Chan said.

With racetrack memory, data "races" around a nanowire "track," and is expected to be used in solid state electronic devices with no moving parts, more durable and capable of holding far more data in the same amount of space than is possible today, the parties noted. For example, IBM and ITRI believe this technology could allow a handheld device such as an mp3 player to store approximately 500,000 songs or approximately 3,500 movies -- 100 times more than is possible today with far lower cost and power consumption. Such a device would not only store vastly more information in the same space, but also require much less power and generate much less heat, and be practically unbreakable, resulting in massive amounts of personal storage that could run on a single battery for weeks at a time and last for decades.

More specifically, racetrack memory promises a high capacity, non-volatile memory storage device with high performance and low energy consumption and stores data in the form of domain walls, which are boundaries between oppositely magnetized regions in magnetic nanowires.

Many domain walls are stored in each racetrack, allowing high data density and low cost -- as low as flash memory using horizontal racetracks and potentially as low as magnetic disk drives using vertical racetracks, IBM explained.

Also, the data within each racetrack are read and written by shifting them to reading and writing elements, and IBM has demonstrated that short pulses of spin polarized current can be used to controllably move several domain walls back and forth along a racetrack, the key underlying principle of this memory.

By: DocMemory
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