Racetrack – The Future Of Computer Memory Systems

Almaden Research Center - Image Credit: The Almaden Research Center (IBM)

Racetrack – The Future Of Computer Memory Systems

A new way and concept of looking at retrievable, stored memory has just been tested, proven and explained by IBM’s main research center in the Silicon Valley.

The Almaden Research Center announced this week the breakthrough in the way memory is stored and retrieved by using a system known internally as silicon-on-insulator photonic wire based racetrack resonators – “Racetrack” for short.

IBM's "RACETRACK" MEMORY MOVES CLOSER: A diagram of the nanowire shows how an electric current is used to slide -- or "race" – tiny magnetic patterns around the nanowire "track," where the device can read and write data in less than a nanosecond. The racetrack memory would stand billions of nanowires, like the one diagrammed here, around the edge of a chip, and potentially allow for hundreds of times the amount of storage in the same space as today's memory. Image Credit: The Almaden Research Center (IBM)

This excerpted from The Almaden Research Center (IBM) -

IBM Moves Closer to New Class of Computer Memory
The Almaden Research Center 10-Apr-2008

IBM scientists unveiled a major breakthrough in their effort to build a new class of memory, nicknamed "racetrack." The racetrack memory would stand billions of nanowires around the edge of a chip, and potentially allow for hundreds of times the amount of storage in the same space as today's memory.
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In two papers published in the April 11 issue of Science, IBM Fellow Stuart Parkin and colleagues at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose describe both the fundamentals of a technology dubbed "racetrack" memory as well as a milestone in that technology. This milestone could lead to electronic devices capable of storing far more data in the same amount of space than is possible today, with lightning-fast boot times, far lower cost and unprecedented stability and durability.
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In their paper, the scientists describe their use of horizontal permalloy nanowires to demonstrate the successive creation, motion and detection of domain walls by using sequences of properly timed nanosecond long spin-polarized current pulses. The cycle time for the writing and shifting of the domain walls is a few tens of nanoseconds. These results illustrate the basic concept of a magnetic shift register relying on the phenomenon of spin momentum transfer to move series of closely spaced domain walls – an entirely new take on the decades-old concept of storing information in movable domain walls.

Ultimately, the researchers expect the racetrack to move into the third dimension (3D) with the construction of a novel 3D racetrack memory device, a paradigm shift from traditional two-dimensional arrays of transistors and magnetic bits found in silicon-based microelectronic devices and hard disk drives. By moving into the third dimension, racetrack memory stands to open new possibilities for developing less expensive, faster devices because it is not dependant on miniaturization as dictated by Moore’s Law.
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The expected benefits of racetrack memory over today’s memory technologies include operating at a greater speed, consuming much less power, and being practically indestructible, potentially unleashing applications that nobody has even imagined yet.
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