Polaris573
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The ability to cram more data into less space on a memory chip or a hard drive has been the crucial force propelling consumer electronics companies to make ever smaller devices.
Now, if an idea that Stuart S. P. Parkin is kicking around in an I.B.M. lab here is on the money, electronic devices could hold 10 to 100 times the data in the same amount of space. That means the iPod that today can hold up to 200 hours of video could store every single TV program broadcast during a week on 120 channels.
Mr. Parkin's new approach, referred to as "racetrack memory," could outpace both solid-state flash memory chips as well as computer hard disks, making it a technology that could transform not only the storage business but the entire computing industry.
His idea is to stand billions of ultrafine wire loops around the edge of a silicon chip - hence the name racetrack - and use electric current to slide infinitesimally small magnets up and down along each of the wires to be read and written as digital ones and zeros.
If the racetrack idea can be made commercial, he will have done what has so far proved impossible - to take microelectronics completely into the third dimension and thus explode the two-dimensional limits of Moore's Law, the 1965 observation by Gordon E. Moore, a co-founder of Intel, that decrees that the number of transistors on a silicon chip doubles roughly every 18 months.
I.B.M. executives are cautious about the timing of the commercial introduction of the technology. But ultimately, the technology may have even more dramatic implications than just smaller music players or wristwatch TVs, said Mark Dean, vice president for systems at I.B.M. Research.
View at TechPowerUp Main Site
Now, if an idea that Stuart S. P. Parkin is kicking around in an I.B.M. lab here is on the money, electronic devices could hold 10 to 100 times the data in the same amount of space. That means the iPod that today can hold up to 200 hours of video could store every single TV program broadcast during a week on 120 channels.
Mr. Parkin's new approach, referred to as "racetrack memory," could outpace both solid-state flash memory chips as well as computer hard disks, making it a technology that could transform not only the storage business but the entire computing industry.
His idea is to stand billions of ultrafine wire loops around the edge of a silicon chip - hence the name racetrack - and use electric current to slide infinitesimally small magnets up and down along each of the wires to be read and written as digital ones and zeros.
If the racetrack idea can be made commercial, he will have done what has so far proved impossible - to take microelectronics completely into the third dimension and thus explode the two-dimensional limits of Moore's Law, the 1965 observation by Gordon E. Moore, a co-founder of Intel, that decrees that the number of transistors on a silicon chip doubles roughly every 18 months.
I.B.M. executives are cautious about the timing of the commercial introduction of the technology. But ultimately, the technology may have even more dramatic implications than just smaller music players or wristwatch TVs, said Mark Dean, vice president for systems at I.B.M. Research.
View at TechPowerUp Main Site
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Not too big eh? I think only 26.5 Million Xbox 360's, PS3's, and Nintendo Wii's have been sold. Too bad IBM had a chip in each one.
