Racetrack memory

Racetrack memory is an existing concept memory with a magnetoelectronic mode of operation. The concept was developed in 2008 by Stuart Parkin and his team at IBM . The first prototypes were presented in December 2011.

functionality

The Racetrack memory stores the individual memory bits in nanowires made of ferromagnetic material. The information is stored in the nanowire in the form of oppositely magnetized regions (domains), whereby between 10 and 100 bits can be accommodated in a nanowire. The bits are in these wires next to each other like on a tape and have to be pushed serially past a reading station for reading or rewriting. The wire can therefore also be viewed as a kind of shift register . Because the read and write electronics only need to be present once for a large number of bits, the space requirement for a memory bit is extremely small.

There are then options for optimizing the number of memory bits per read station and the average memory density, which can lead to variants more like MRAM or hard disk. With the spatial arrangement of the storage wires, three-dimensional designs are also conceivable, which can further increase the storage density in relation to the base area. With this three-dimensional arrangement of the nanowires or racetracks, a storage density that is 100 times higher is possible compared to today's standard flash memory cards.

Overall, the memory is similar to the magnetic bubble memory .

literature

Kurt Gerecke, Klemens Poschke: IBM System Storage Compendium. The IBM memory history from 1952-2010 . IBM Corporation, 2010.
M. Hayashi, L. Thomas, R. Moriya, C. Rettner, SSP Parkin: Current-Controlled Magnetic Domain-Wall Nanowire Shift Register . In: Science . tape 320 , no. 5873 , 2008, p. 209-211 , doi : 10.1126 / science.1154587 .
Stuart SP Parkin, Masamitsu Hayashi, Luc Thomas: Magnetic Domain-Wall Racetrack Memory . In: Science . tape 320 , no. 5873 , 2008, p. 190-194 , doi : 10.1126 / science.1145799 .

Web links

Tom Simonite: data race track in the chip . Technology Review, December 7, 2011, accessed December 8, 2011.
Christof Windeck: IBM: Racetrack memory instead of MRAM or hard disk . heise-Newsticker, April 11, 2008, accessed on November 29, 2009 (with functional sketch).
Rainer Graefen: Nanofilament storage could herald a paradigm shift in storage technology . Storage-Insider.de, September 19, 2008, accessed on November 29, 2009 (with functional sketch).
Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI): New magnetic storage faster than conventional hard drives. In: psi.ch. February 8, 2010, accessed August 13, 2015 .
Made in IBM Labs: Researchers Demonstrate Future of Computing with Graphene, Racetrack and Carbon Nanotube Breakthroughs . December 5, 2011 (IBM press release).
Norbert Deuschle: IBM Research with new findings and advances in nanostorage . Storage Consortium.de, December 28, 2010 ".

Individual evidence

↑ cf. Stuart SP Parkin, Masamitsu Hayashi, Luc Thomas: Magnetic Domain-Wall Racetrack Memory . In: Science . tape 320 , no. 5873 , 2008, p. 190-194 , doi : 10.1126 / science.1145799 .
↑ Ben Schwan: Racetrack memory in conventional production. In: heise online. December 7, 2011, accessed December 7, 2011 .

[1] . Stuart SP Parkin, Masamitsu Hayashi, Luc Thomas: Magnetic Domain-Wall Racetrack Memory . In: Science . tape 320 , no. 5873 , 2008, p. 190-194 , doi : 10.1126 / science.1145799 .

[2] Ben Schwan: Racetrack memory in conventional production. In: heise online. December 7, 2011, accessed December 7, 2011 .