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 Technology
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07 Dec 06 17:24
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Novel 'spintronic' devices developed to make computers more powerful
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Vipin Wilson
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Washington, Dec 7: British researchers have created novel 'spintronic' devices they say might lead to more powerful and permanent data storage chips in computers.
Physicist at the Universities of Bath, Bristol and Leeds say they have discovered how to precisely control the pattern of magnetic fields in thin magnetic films.
The discovery has important consequences for the information technology industry, since current memory storage has limited scope for further development.
The physicists have demonstrated that the direction of these magnetic areas can be "read" by measuring their electrical resistance, and this can be done much faster than the system for reading information on current hard drives.
They propose that the magnetic state can be switched from "up" to "down" with a short pulse of electrical current, thereby fulfilling all the requirements for a fast magnetic memory cell.
Using the new technology, computers will never lose memory even during a power cut - as soon as the power is restored, the data will reappear.
"The results are important as they suggest a new route for developing high density magnetic memory chips which will not lose information when the power is switched off. For the first time data will be written and read very fast using only electrical currents" Professor Simon Bending, of the University of Bath's Department of Physics, said.
"We're particularly pleased as we were told in the beginning that our approach probably would not work, but we persevered and now it has definitely paid off," he added.
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