Betting on the Racetrack

IBM is promising a new breakthrough in storage using new "racetrack" memory based on spintronics.  The technology will enable a potentially order-of-magnitude increase in memory storage.

Ultimately, the researchers expect spintronics to move into the third dimension, with 3D racetrack memory devices that will be even faster and cheaper, since they won't be dependent on the miniaturization dictates of Moore's Law.

What I found more personally interesting about the story, however, is the inscrutability of the technology.  Now, I basically understand the technology underlying ICs, conventional memory, hard drives, and the like.  Of course, I couldn't detail the engineering or physics, but I'm comfortable that there really isn't anything about a modern computer that I find technologically out of reach.  This, however, is over my head:

"Recent developments in the controlled movement of domain walls in magnetic nanowires by short pulses of spin-polarized current give promise of a nonvolatile memory device with the high performance and reliability of conventional solid-state memory but at the low cost of conventional magnetic disk drive storage," according to the abstract for the article in Science.

Huh?

Comments

[Russell Lutz]

"Recent developments in the controlled movement of domain walls in magnetic nanowires by short pulses of spin-polarized current give promise of a nonvolatile memory device with the high performance and reliability of conventional solid-state memory but at the low cost of conventional magnetic disk drive storage," said Geordi to Commander Riker.

[David Gaw]

Well, obviously. Recently, I thought I was experiencing uncontrolled movement of domain walls in my magnetic nanowires, but eventually I concluded it was just gas.