Techtree News Staff, Apr 11, 2008 2011 hrs IST
IBM yesterday presented the concept of a new storage technology that could replace traditional hard drives and flash-based solid state disk drives (SSDs).
IBM yesterday presented the concept of a new storage technology that could replace traditional hard drives and flash-based solid state disk drives (SSDs). "Racetrack" memory is IBM's big new idea on the storage front, where the stored data 'races' around a wire 'track'.
Ongoing Research in Spintronics (a neologism for "spin-based electronics", the science of using spin of an electron instead of its charge in information circuits) has enabled IBM to push the development in this space. And the result? Well, MP3 & Media players that can store several terabytes of multimedia content and are super fast. Due to their small size, these players will be more versatile and robust than those currently made using silicon chips and circuit elements. IBM claims their power consumption could be low enough for a mobile device with "Racetrack" memory to enable it to run on a single battery for weeks, while the stored data would be protected from degradation for decades.
Kevin Roche of IBM's Spintronics Lab says the research would lead to cooler and faster devices that could store more data in lesser space. IBM. Similar to the flash memory, "Racetrack" memory is envisioned to have no moving parts. IBM claims it will not have any wear-out mechanism and data can be rewritten "endlessly without any wear and tear".
"We have demonstrated the physics and materials underlying racetrack memory," said Dr Stuart Parkin, an IBM fellow. He said it is possible to build a racetrack memory and they are starting out on building a prototype, which could take up to four years to produce, and a further three or four to refine it for commercial use.
IBM believes that the technology could be ready in a decade. We sure hope so! For now watch the video here.
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Lets sleep dead for another 10 years! Then it will be the time for racetrack!
Sandeep | Shimla | 13/04/08 06:17 PM | Report abuse Reply
That would be so cool, think of the energy savings, and data storage in MP3 players =D
Renzeko (Taylor | Edmonton | 12/04/08 01:02 PM | Report abuse Reply