IBM Makes a Super Memory Breakthrough 164
adeelarshad82 writes "IBM says they have made a significant leap forward in the viability of 'Racetrack memory,' a new technology design which has the potential to exponentially increase computing power. This new tech could give devices the ability to store as much as 100 times more information than they do now, which would be accessed at far greater speeds while utilizing 'much less' energy than today's designs. In the future, a single portable device might be able to hold as much memory as today's business-class servers and run on a single battery charge for weeks at a time. Racetrack memory works by storing data as magnetic regions (also called domains), which would be transported along nanowire 'racetracks.' Instead of forcing a computer to seek out the data it needs, as traditional computing systems do, the information would automatically slide along the racetrack to where it could be used."
super (Score:2)
That's super-doubleplus good.
Bubble Memory (Score:2)
"Breakthrough" Now a Meaningless Word (Score:5, Insightful)
"We discovered that domain walls don't hit peak acceleration as soon as the current is turned on, and that it takes them exactly the same time and distance to hit peak acceleration as it does to decelerate and eventually come to a stop," commented Dr. Stuart Parkin, an IBM Fellow at IBM Research. "This was previously undiscovered in part because it was not clear whether the domain walls actually had mass, and how the effects of acceleration and deceleration could exactly compensate one another. Now we know domain walls can be positioned precisely along the racetracks simply by varying the length of the current pulses even though the walls have mass."
Don't get me wrong, race track memory is some pretty exciting stuff but I think we're dealing with an observation that means they can now proceed along a certain strategy for storing and retrieving bits. I don't think I would call this a breakthrough, it sounds like they set out to investigate domain walls and learned something. How is that a breakthrough? We're still in the ten to fifteen years away period which is that magic flying car period that, in many instances of exciting new technology, never seems to shrink.
... probably something like "Researchers Shitting Themselves Over New Discovery."
"Breakthrough" no longer means anything to me. I don't know what you would have to put in the title to get me genuinely excited about a real breakthrough
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I hear you.
I'm only on board with scientists are "baffled" or experts are "shocked."
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"Breakthrough" no longer means anything to me.
I, for one, look forward to 15 years of news articles proclaiming new breakthroughs mean we'll have racetrack memory "within ten years"
Re:"Breakthrough" Now a Meaningless Word (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, it's interesting how every story about a new technology ends up full of comments about how it's not a big deal, how it only works in a lab, how any real applications are decades away, etc... yet there's new faster, better, cooler, more efficient, etc... products coming out all the time.
That's not to say that if someone starts crowing about their exciting new discovery that you should automatically rush in and invest all your money in it, but technology does actually move forward, and not everything is
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I have to wonder if there is going to be any market for these advances. The high end is shrinking very quickly so the market for really super high end cutting edge stuff is also shrinking.
Even super computers are using a large number of COTS technology these days. In the future will their be any customers for the first very expensive race track memory systems?
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It will be interesting to see. Even the DOD is going to more COTS. Will the DOD and DOE contracts be enough to get this memory from the lab into production and then finally to mass market?
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I have to wonder if there is going to be any market for these advances.
Did you even read the summary? "In the future, a single portable device might be able to hold as much memory as today's business-class servers and run on a single battery charge for weeks at a time."
Fifteen years ago nobody thought we'd be watching YouTube.
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I did. but there may be the need between the consumer and the lab for this to mature.
A price is no object performance market. As I said even super computers are now often made up of COTS parts. This is more a question of economics and not technology. Will any company be willing to make the long term investment to bring this to the consumer market without a nice cash injection from a high margin market?
Re:"Breakthrough" Now a Meaningless Word (Score:5, Insightful)
It's "Bubble Memory" all over again.
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Well I'd have to say that since you don't know what the breakthrough is, nor do you really appear to understand the technical issues involved (other than quoting words from the article)... I'm not sure you are really saying anything. Much like my post :)
Breakthrough's in science can be very simple things that move projects forward significantly. A breakthrough doesn't require a nuke going off, or a plane breaking a new mach record.... it could be as simple as what they state as to resolve an issue that
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http://xkcd.com/678/ [xkcd.com]
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If you're trying to do <this>, you do it like this: <this>. And it's usually a good idea to review before posting.
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If you're trying to do <this>, you do it like this: <this>. And it's usually a good idea to review before posting.
Did you review that?
I think you meant <this> didn't you?
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Exponentially (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate it when people misuse the word exponentially to mean big.
At best, it will allow the current exponential growth to increase.
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Here what it boils down to, IMHO: Will the racetrack memory provide enough addressable space, at a decent price, to allow Adobe and other large applications to run decently?
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Correction, Adobe applications. It would be nice to be able to feed stuff large amounts of RAM addressable in nanoseconds, because it is a *lot* easier to throw more hardware at something than to get most vendors to tighten up their products.
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At best, it will allow the current exponential growth to increase, exponentially.
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Yep, it's like "exponentially" is the ultimate word to use.
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"Whazzarop is a super technological breakthrough potentially enabling up arrows increase in computing performance."
Not holding my breath (Score:2)
Racetrack memory is still years away from hitting the consumer market..
In other words, maybe in the next 20 years, right?
Re:Not holding my breath (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, I'm getting too old for vaporware. Now I try only to pay attention to "on shelves now".
Re:Not holding my breath (Score:4, Insightful)
I won't defend the rather confused writeup, but the research itself still sounds like genuine progress in a worthwhile area. Moore's Law, or rather the more general/important version that "computer stuff just keeps getting better," isn't a law of nature. Technology is moved forward a little at a time by just this type of research. And yes, most research goes nowhere. But the exceptions to that rule made the world what it is today.
Re:Why Read Slashdot (Score:2)
I read it more for the corporate-mood stories, following who's deciding what on existing tech. For things like the Ubuntu Unity announcement, I note that as like a calendar date to revisit in the future to see if it still happens, and if it does, to pay attention then.
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Five years (Score:4, Funny)
20 years
Please avoid careless speculation. The SPI of racetrack memory, as with other microelectronic breakthroughs is five years [slashdot.org].
20 years (Score:3)
The overwhelming consensus SPI for flying cars is twenty years.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2004/tc20040825_4462_tc119.htm [businessweek.com]
http://www.kurzweilai.net/forums/topic/why-flying-cars-are-a-long-way-off [kurzweilai.net]
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TuZyTN2xWuwJ:www.slideshare.net/RichStrong/magic-dragon-flying-car-project-presentation+flying+car+20+years+-%22your+flying+car+awaits%22&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us [googleusercontent.com] http://www.davinciinstitute.com/papers/where-is-my-flyin [davinciinstitute.com]
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depends. I remember when perpendicular memory was 'years' aways. It came out 3 year latter.
To be clear, I am talking about hearing it on /., not the Iwasaki(sp?) paper.
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Then why read Slashdot? The Best Buy circular in the Sunday paper is what you are looking for.
"Years away" could mean as soon as 12 months.
Please avoid careless speculation.
Wow, apparently "sarcasm" isn't spoken here, or at least you bozos don't understand it. Work on that then get back to me, k?
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Wow, apparently "sarcasm" isn't spoken here, or at least you bozos don't understand it. Work on that then get back to me, k?
Why would one get back to you? It's not like your sarcasm is of a good quality or you have something interesting to add anyway.
Now get back under the rock you sprang in the outer world and, for the God sake, pay for some tutoring in respect subjects if you can't learn them by yourself.
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Racetrack (Score:2)
So it goes really fast, but the article left out the answer to the quintessential question: does it turn left?
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Maybe someday, though, it may learn to, so that it can thwart the attempt on the Prime Minister of Malaysia's life.
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No, it's not an ambi-turner.
Maybe someday, though, it may learn to, so that it can thwart the attempt on the Prime Minister of Malaysia's life.
Fortunately it WILL help with the development of really teeny-tiny cell phones; so there's that.
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They already have those in Vietnam. [rackspacecloud.com]
Excuse My Skepticism (Score:2)
Racetrack Memory? Again? (Score:2)
I'll be intrested when they have something like a DIMM form factor that is actually better than existing memory.
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Can I ask Slashdot to not post any more stories ... until something interesting happens
you must be new here. low ID aside.
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Overpromise and underdeliver (Score:3)
I'll be happy enough when it's up to competing with rotating memory, which is a lot more likely.
Serial memory is serial memory, and promising to replace Random Access Memory in latency-critical applications like main memory is just nonsense. Either the people putting out these claims are stupid or they think we are.
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I'll be happy enough when it's up to competing with rotating memory, which is a lot more likely. Serial memory is serial memory, and promising to replace Random Access Memory in latency-critical applications like main memory is just nonsense. Either the people putting out these claims are stupid or they think we are.
You won't be asking to access the one bit at the end of a 8KB track (and stalling the CPU waiting for it). Modern chips move a whole line of cache at once - a whole 64 bytes for my current chip. And according to the wikipedia article on racetrack memory, the tracks are only 10-20 bits each - not terribly serial. If one track can be cycled around as fast as DRAM, then a bunch of tracks can be done in parallel to handle 64 bytes at once just as fast as DRAM. That's probably years away, but it's not as crazy
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This was interesting. Determining whether or not the domains has mass is very exciting.
Just because you only care about crap that you can buy doesn't mean others aren't interested in scientific breakthroughs.
The pre-millennium jandrese called, he want's to know why you killed his curiosity.
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P = NP (Score:2)
a new technology design which has the potential to exponentially increase computing power
P = NP
QED
Hold on to your butts... (Score:2)
"Instead of forcing the computer to seek out data." (Meaning, at the address where it was stored?) "The data automatically slides to where it can be used." (Is the data omniscient?) "Powerful and efficient computing." (OK, perhaps w/regard to data retrieval.)
I don't get it.
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My understanding is that if your storage was one big racetrack the "address" of the bits you wanted correlates to the size of the pulse needed to "seek" it by a constant amount (this constant factor being the breakthrough discussd here). so if you want bit number 100 then simply pulse the memory 100*constant and it shows up on your sensor. No "seeking" flipping of transistors required
here's an idea (Score:4, Funny)
why not connect the racetracks directly to the internet tubes. then the information could slide along the racetrack into a series of tubes and ultimately slide right into your own personal racetrack.
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The domains move at about 100 m/s. Light moves through an optical fiber at about 200,000,000 m/s. Assuming that your scheme was possible, it would represent a 2-million-fold increase in latency (at the physical layer). It would take a packet 12 hours to get from New York to Los Angeles, giving a round-trip time of about a day.
Aside from the fact that it would be completely useless, it's also impossible. The internet is packet switched, not circuit based. There's almost never a complete, continuous "tra
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look, the internet is not a truck. you cannot just dump enormous amounts of material onto it.
as long as I don't have to wait until Monday to get an internet I sent out on Friday, I don't see what the problem is.
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Not every obviously stupid statement is a funny statement. Neither is every post that contains the phrase "series of tubes" hilarious. It only makes sense to imply that I missed the joke if there was a joke to miss.
I contend there was nothing humorous. Can you point out anything in the original post that was funny?
The post doesn't contain any puns, explicit mockery, surprise or elements with multiple interpretations, which are some basic aspects of humor. It might be argued that the post is so stupid th
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Responding to jokes like Debbie Downer because you don't think they are funny does not add anything to the conversation. Responding, as you did, in perfect sincerity is worthy of a /. WHOOSH.
Defending your post with a checklist of what a joke requires to be funny just makes you look even MORE stiff and grumpy. If you don't like /. humor, set your preferences to down-rank +funny mods or just scroll down.
I'll give you the benefit of doubt though. We all have bad days. I've groaned at horrible jokes and typed
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For some reason, I read your original post in the voice of "Debbie Downer" and I actually thought you were being pretty darn funny.
Then I read your response, and realized you are being serious.
Maybe your sense of humor is overly-strict. Maybe you're just having a bad day. Maybe you're the next Andy Kaufman, goofing us all with a lecture on what makes jokes funny. I'm too tired to figure it out, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
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why not connect the racetracks directly to the internet tubes. then the information could slide along the racetrack into a series of tubes and ultimately slide right into your own personal racetrack.
I imagine the Pentagon and US State Dept would strongly object, even sue... and please think at the Swedish court and women population: do you think they'd be able to handle the entire inter-tubes connected population?
Yawn... (Score:3)
This is just bubble memory again (Score:5, Interesting)
To this old fart, it looks the same, just a different way to fab the thing. But hey what do I know?
One thing I do know. Current scientists aren't very well educated on what has gone before. About a year ago I saw the "breakthrough" development of a "plasma transistor" that I also had in a 1950's book on my shelf....happens pretty frequently these days. These guys are so specialized they don't even know the history of their own fields anymore, much less a broad history.
Reminds me of Hari Seldon and "the galactic empire is crumbling" to be frank. Not even up to Heinlein standards!
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One thing I do know. Current scientists aren't very well educated on what has gone before.
Computer scientists / IT people have the same problem. Nothing is really new. Personally I'm waiting for "implicit typing" to be in style again. Python whitespace is conceptually pretty close, probably why I find it repulsive.
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Personally I'm waiting for "implicit typing" to be in style again.
WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF TOMORROW! [developer.com]
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Oh BS.
Python's type checking is done at run-time, which is why it's so horrible (though it's better than the weak typing as present in Perl and Javascript... PS, I like both of those languages for various reasons, I just hate weak typing).
Type inference as present in C#, Haskell, Ocaml, and others, is done at compile time, and so is perfectly safe. It just means the programmer can spend less time casting things, which is a huge pain in the ass in a strictly type language like C#, particularly when you thro
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Oh BS.
My post wasn't being serious...
Type inference as present in C#, Haskell, Ocaml, and others, is done at compile time, and so is perfectly safe. It just means the programmer can spend less time casting things, which is a huge pain in the ass in a strictly type language like C#, particularly when you throw generics and lambdas into the mix.
Gee no shit? It's almost like I already posted that [slashdot.org].
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Hah, didn't notice the author of the post, just the (intentionally) dumbass response. My bad. :)
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That's cool. :)
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Python whitespace is conceptually pretty close, probably why I find it repulsive.
Python whitespace in a nutshell: Indent your code as always. Next, don't bother with any brace brackets because you're done.
Why this bothers anybody is utterly beyond me. On the other hand, when I write C these days I sometimes wonder why I have to babysit the compiler by entering a bunch of brace brackets when the indentation is already there showing the code structure plain as a day.
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You mean has had for 3 years now? And what is awful about it? Are you one of those people who confuse it with the old VARIANT of VB or dynamic typing like you find in Ruby, etc. Everything is still statically-typed, you just can avoid lots of noise by having to write the type explicitly.
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"Guessing"? Try rigorous type inference.
Type inference is how languages like Haskell and Ocaml work, and no one seems to think they're "awful". You still get rigorous compile-time type checking, but with less horrible explicit casting and variable type declarations, which is *damn* nice when you're dealing with generics or lambdas.
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FWIW, the compiler doesn't "guess" at the type. The type is determined by the type of the first value assigned to it, so a statement like var test = null is not valid, but var test = new object(); would be.
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I think they added that for Linq. While it's useful for Linq statements, it isn't the best practice to use it anywhere else imo.
No, the var keyword was added to support anonymous classes. It has nothing to do with LINQ.
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I assume you meant anonymous delegates, and in particular, the deliciously terse-yet-expressive new (well, to me... my company *just* switched to VS 2k10, with its new compiler, in the last couple months) lambda syntax, that manages to make things like List.Find() not totally suck...
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No, I mean anonymous types [microsoft.com]. Things as simple as:
var v = new { Amount = 108, Message = "Hello" };
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Huh, I'll be damned, I didn't realize that existed (probably because I've never played with LINQ). I'm also not sure how I feel about it, but it's certainly... interesting. It also seems like a very niche feature, unless I'm missing something (specifically, it appears said feature is primarily used in LINQ as a mechanism for returning rows from a query).
Certainly type inference seems *far* more useful, to me, in the context of generics and lambdas (and certainly *not* limited to just LINQ). But being a (v
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Yes, in most cases you are going to be using them with LINQ, but they are also useful if you just want to create a type in a block of code without needing some formal class definition. That's not broadly useful, but I've done it a number of times where I work.
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Now to further clarify, select statements can return results that are anonymous classes that would require the usage of var, but var in and of itself has no ties to LINQ. And it is perfectly fine to use it outside of just the domain of anonymous classes.
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C++0X adds the same thing, re-using the auto keyword, and of course there's no connection to linq there. C++'s problem was that the standard library clases were ending up with type names so long no one wanted to type them!
1950s mercury acoustic delay lines (Score:2)
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The break through isn't the technology, it's how they are going about it, or certain aspects of the technology. Like, does a domain have mass.
Seriously, you need to to think a bit more. It's like someone finding a away to make better rubber tires and all you can say is 'Tires? hell those where around 100 years ago, this isnt new at all. I guess these scientist don't know their history."
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To this old fart, it looks the same, just a different way to fab the thing. But hey what do I know?
It is the same thing, but the scale is far different, with much the same consequences as going from discrete transistors to nanoscale transistors etched on silicon, i.e., it can (theoretically) store more data and retrieve it faster.
About a year ago I saw the "breakthrough" development of a "plasma transistor" that I also had in a 1950's book on my shelf...
I know what you mean. I was going through a mass-market encyclopedia of science from the 1960's the other day, and stumbled across an article promising that holographic memory was right around the corner.
To be fair, though, the basic principles of most of the technology we use t
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A book on your shelf?
If it's not on the Internet, it doesn't exist.
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Speaking of history repeating itself...I'm buying gold while it still has a way to go before it peaks!
Interesting... I'm doing the same with history.
Anything that will foil the evil cloud!!! (Score:3)
If I can carry around all my data in a little pod, then all I'll need is access to input and output devices.
That would be far out. Thanks IBM, for the neat science fiction story of the day!
Racetrack memory isn't something new... (Score:3)
What happens if (Score:2)
I watch car races on TV for the same reason most people do. To see the crashes. What happens if the data in these memory chips fails to make the turn? Getting implaled by ones and zeros doesn't sound like much fun. I'm just glad we're not using Roman Numerals, because those dots on the i's flying about, and those x's look a lot like those Japanese surikans, and those L's winging around like boomerangs.
Just how safe are we?
And run on a single battery charge for weeks... (Score:2)
Riiight. I welcome our long-lasting, battery powered overlords...if they ever transcend marketing fiction and appear IRL.
I'm not an engineer, but... (Score:2)
I read this:
Racetrack memory works by storing data as magnetic regions (also called domains), which would be transported along nanowire "racetracks." Instead of forcing a computer to seek out the data it needs, as traditional computing systems do, the information would automatically slide along the racetrack to where it could be used."
And I'm focused on the word "automatically". Um, so racetrack memory is clairvoiant? No, it appears to be a FIFO method. So it appears "automatically" when it's time for it
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IBM made a breakthrough? (Score:2)
I didnt realize they were still in the business of developing new stuff.
Seems the core of their business is acquiring other technology companies, and injecting red tape and excess bureaucracy into other enterprises through proliferation of their "Architectural Thinking" workshops.
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IBM's hardware is just a continuation of what they developed in the 70's. Same with as400/iseries.
AIX was acquired. Lotus was acquired. Tivoli was acquired. The Websphere suite is a thinly veiled attempt to rebrand free software. (I'm talking to you "IBM HTTP Server")
Their last gasp of true innovation was OS/2, and they managed to screw that one up.
IBM is just a bunch of mediocre consultants and middle management now.
Link to publication in Science (Score:2)
Courtesy of a better writeup at:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9202379/IBM_s_racetrack_memory_moves_closer_to_the_checkered_flag?taxonomyId=147 [computerworld.com]
In a paper published in the Dec. 24 issue of Science Magazine, the IBM researchers report that domain walls have mass and do indeed take a bit of time to speed up to peak velocity, and to slow down. Knowing this, they'll be able to move and retrieve data on a racetrack trip accurately. There's still a lot of work to be done before racetrack becomes a reality, but according to Parkin, the biggest questions -- whether an electric charge would move these domain walls, and whether or not they have mass -- have now been answered. Now the problems are more practical and less theoretical: how do you build a racetrack chip that works reliably with millions or even billions of these racetracks, for example. "Those are the questions that we can only address by building prototypes and testing them for a period of time," Parkin said.
And the official IBM press release:
https://www-304.ibm.com/jct03001c/press/us/en/pressrelease/33291.wss [ibm.com]
I see more data center utilization for this technology rather than consumer devices. Be nice if I could get a home NAS on one of these in 5-10 years.
A serious question, (Score:2)
So what's the difference between this and the old TI bubble memory concept?
More info (Score:2)
Reminds me of a very old technology... (Score:2)
Delay line memory [wikipedia.org].
Completely different form of energy, of course.
IBM R&D (Score:2)
Memristors anyone? (Score:2)
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Sounds like Eckert and Maunchly weren't too far off with mercury-tube memory in Univac.
If only they had exponentiated to mercury-nano-tube memory. If they had used vacs in parallel as Univax.