Russian scientists claim to have invented a new superconducting memory architecture that will be 100s of times faster and consume dozens of times less power than conventional memory chips. The Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT, Russia) working with the Moscow State University (MSU, Russia) claim the architecture can also be used to perform single-flux quantum logic operations for superconducting processors, but admits that commercialization is decades away.

"What we have so far is an idea, a concept," Alexander Golubov, the head of Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology’s Laboratory of Quantum Topological Phenomena in Superconducting Systems told EE Times. "We expect its proof of principle experiment to be commenced in the near future." After proof of principle, the researchers will begin a "construction testing stage, where the selection of materials and optimization of the topology will be made," said Golubov. "It's hard to evaluate even the approximate time of the technology's possible commercialization, but it's probably decades away."

Nevertheless, at least one analyst is gung-ho on the project, which harnesses a superconducting quantum phenomenon that could be compatible with attempts to build superconducting computers at the U.S. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) and the attempts to build working quantum computers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as well as at companies like D-Wave Systems Inc. (Burnaby, Canada).

"This research as published shows great promise in the untapped potential of materials science to advance storage and computing designs," Rick Doherty, research director at Envisioneering (Seaford, N.Y.) told EE Times in an exclusive interview. "Superconducting quantum computer research and designs may get a boost in support and funding thanks to this team’s remarkable materials engineering work."

The unique part of the MIPT/MSU project is a new type of superconducting junction and memory architecture. Normal Josephson junctions use sandwiches of superconductor-insulator-superconductor such as in D-Wave's quantum computer, but MIPT/MSU's memory uses adds a normal-metal/ferromagnetic-metal (N/F) interlayer adjacent the insulator to achieve two stable conduction currents that can quickly switch between 1s and 0s. Since superconductors conduct current with zero resistance, the two stable states should take no energy to maintain, argue the scientists in their paper Superconducting phase domains for memory applications.

The MIPT/MSU researchers claim that read and write operations will be hundreds or even thousands of times faster than with conventional ferromagnetic memory technologies--depending on the final materials formulation--taking just a few hundred picoseconds to switch a 0 to a 1 or visa versa.

By: DocMemory
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