IBM Reaches Milestone in Racetrack Memory Development

It would seem that the research and development efforts invested into a certain project that IBM is working on, one that deals with a new way of storing data, have seen some very promising results.

Nowadays, the most typical means of storing data are magnetic hard disk drives and solid state drives.

Both options have their advantages, the former in their low cost and capacity and the latter in their high transfer speeds.

IBM, however, is actually working on what it calls racetrack memory, a solution that is said to merge the benefits of both the above but without adding extra cost.

Regular computing systems have to seek the data needed, but the racetrack memory can supposedly automatically move the needed data by sliding magnetic bits back and forth along nanowire "racetracks," hence the name.

Basically, electronic manufacturers should be able to design portable devices capable of storing all the movies released worldwide in a year and still end up with free space.

The main thing that allows this is how racetrack memory can store data on magnetic regions called domains in racetracks that have a width of just a few tens of nanometers.

The most recent advancement in the research was a method of precisely controlling the placement of the domains which, while nano-sized, can store up to 100 times more memory than existing solutions.

Electrical pulses can be controlled in such a way as to move the domain walls at speeds of hundreds of miles per hour and then stop them perfectly at the position needed.

All in all, this would allow access to massive amounts of information within less than a billionth of a second.

“We discovered that domain walls don't hit peak acceleration as soon as the current is turned on, and that it takes them exactly the same time and distance to hit peak acceleration as it does to decelerate and eventually come to a stop,” said Dr. Stuart Parkin, an IBM fellow at IBM research.

“This was previously undiscovered in part because it was not clear whether the domain walls actually had mass, and how the effects of acceleration and deceleration could exactly compensate one another. Now we know domain walls can be positioned precisely along the racetracks simply by varying the length of the current pulses even though the walls have mass."