[tt] NYT: Redefining the Architecture of Memory

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Redefining the Architecture of Memory
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/11/technology/11storage.html

By JOHN MARKOFF

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The ability to cram more data into less space
on a memory chip or a hard drive has been the crucial force
propelling consumer electronics companies to make ever smaller
devices.

It shrank the mainframe computer to fit on the desktop, shrank it
again to fit on our laps and again to fit into our shirt pockets.

Now, if an idea that Stuart S. P. Parkin is kicking around in an
I.B.M. lab here is on the money, electronic devices could hold 10
to 100 times the data in the same amount of space. That means the
iPod that today can hold up to 200 hours of video could store every
single TV program broadcast during a week on 120 channels.

The tech world, obsessed with data density, is taking notice
because Mr. Parkin has done it before. An I.B.M. research fellow
largely unknown outside a small fraternity of physicists, Mr.
Parkin puttered for two years in a lab in the early 1990s, trying
to find a way to commercialize an odd magnetic effect of quantum
mechanics he had observed at supercold temperatures. With the help
of a research assistant, he was able to manipulate the alignment of
electronics to alter the magnetic state of tiny areas of a magnetic
data storage disc, making it possible to store and retrieve
information in a smaller amount of space. The huge increases in
digital storage made possible by giant magnetoresistance, or GMR,
made consumer audio and video iPods, as well as Google-style data
centers, a reality.

Mr. Parkin thinks he is poised to bring about another breakthrough
that could increase the amount of data stored on a chip or a hard
drive by a factor of a hundred. If he proves successful in his
quest, he will create a "universal" computer memory, one that can
potentially replace dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, and
flash memory chips, and even make a "disk drive on a chip"
possible.

It could begin to replace flash memory in three to five years,
scientists say. Not only would it allow every consumer to carry
data equivalent to a college library on small portable devices, but
a tenfold or hundredfold increase in memory would be disruptive
enough to existing storage technologies that it would undoubtedly
unleash the creativity of engineers who would develop totally new
entertainment, communication and information products.

Currently the flash storage chip business is exploding. Used as
storage in digital cameras, cellphones and PCs, the commercially
available flash drives with multiple memory chips store up to 64
gigabytes of data. Capacity is expected to reach about 50 gigabytes
on a single chip in the next half-decade.

However, flash memory has an Achilles' heel. Although it can read
data quickly, it is very slow at storing it. That has led the
industry on a frantic hunt for alternative storage technologies
that might unseat flash.

Mr. Parkin's new approach, referred to as "racetrack memory," could
outpace both solid-state flash memory chips as well as computer
hard disks, making it a technology that could transform not only
the storage business but the entire computing industry.

"Finally, after all these years, we're reaching fundamental physics
limits," he said. "Racetrack says we're going to break those
scaling rules by going into the third dimension."

His idea is to stand billions of ultrafine wire loops around the
edge of a silicon chip -- hence the name racetrack -- and use
electric current to slide infinitesimally small magnets up and down
along each of the wires to be read and written as digital ones and
zeros.

His research group is able to slide the tiny magnets along notched
nanowires at speeds greater than 100 meters a second. Since the
tiny magnetic domains have to travel only submolecular distances,
it is possible to read and write magnetic regions with different
polarization as quickly as a single nanosecond -- far faster than
existing storage technologies.

If the racetrack idea can be made commercial, he will have done
what has so far proved impossible -- to take microelectronics
completely into the third dimension and thus explode the
two-dimensional limits of Moore's Law, the 1965 observation by
Gordon E. Moore, a co-founder of Intel, that decrees that the
number of transistors on a silicon chip doubles roughly every 18
months.

Just as with Mr. Parkin's earlier work in GMR, there is no shortage
of skeptics at this point.

Giant storage companies like Seagate Technology are starting to
turn toward flash to create a generation of hybrid storage systems
that combine silicon and rotating disk technologies for speed and
capacity. But Seagate is still looking in the two-dimensional realm
for future advances.

"There are a lot of neat technologies, but you have to be able to
make them cost-effectively," said Bill Watkins, Seagate's chief
executive.

So far, the racetrack idea is far from the Best Buy shelves and it
is very much still in Mr. Parkin's laboratory here. His track
record, however, suggests that the storage industry might do well
to take notice of the implications of his novel nanowire-based
storage system in the not too distant future.

"Stuart marches to a little bit of a different drummer, but that's
what it takes to have enough courage to go off the beaten path,"
said James S. Harris, an electrical engineering professor at
Stanford University and co-director of the I.B.M.-Stanford
Spintronic Science and Applications Center.

A visit to Mr. Parkin's crowded office reveals him to be a
51-year-old British-American scientist for whom the term
hyperactive is a modest understatement at best. During interviews
he is constantly in motion. When he speaks publicly at scientific
gatherings, his longtime technology assistant, Kevin Roche, is
careful to see that Mr. Parkin empties the change from his pockets,
lest he distract his audience with the constant jingling of coins
and keys.

Today, a number of industry analysts think there are important
parallels between Mr. Parkin's earlier GMR research and his new
search for racetrack materials.

"We're on the verge of exciting new memory architectures, and his
is one of the leading candidates," said Richard Doherty, director
of the Envisioneering Group, a computing and consumer electronics
consulting firm based in Seaford, N.Y.

Mr. Parkin said he had recently shifted his focus and now thought
that his racetracks might be competitive with other storage
technologies even if they were laid horizontally on a silicon chip.

I.B.M. executives are cautious about the timing of the commercial
introduction of the technology. But ultimately, the technology may
have even more dramatic implications than just smaller music
players or wristwatch TVs, said Mark Dean, vice president for
systems at I.B.M. Research.

"Something along these lines will be very disruptive," he said. "It
will not only change the way we look at storage, but it could
change the way we look at processing information. We're moving into
a world that is more data-centric than computing-centric."

This is just a hint, but it suggests that I.B.M. may think that
racetrack memory could blur the line between storage and computing,
providing a key to a new way to search for data, as well as store
and retrieve data.

And if it is, Mr. Parkin's experimental physics lab will have
transformed the computing world yet again.