Japanese researchers have made the world’s best-performing pure spin current source made of bismuth–antimony (BiSb) alloys, which they report as the best candidate for the first industrial application of topological insulators. This is a big step forward towards spin-orbit torque magnetoresistive random-access memory (SOT-MRAM) devices with the potential to replace existing memory technologies.
This could accelerate the development of high-density, ultra-low power, and ultra-fast non-volatile memories for Internet of Things (IoT) and other applications now becoming increasingly in demand for industrial and home use.
The BiSb thin films have high conductivity and a large hall effect at room temperature. BiSb-based SOT-MRAM should outperform the existing spin-transfer torque (STT) MRAM technology.
SOT-MRAM can be switched one order of magnitude faster than STT-MRAM, the switching energy can be reduced by at least two orders of magnitude. The writing speed could be increased 20 times and the bit density increased by a factor of ten.
If scaled up successfully, BiSb-based SOT-MRAM could drastically improve upon its heavy metal-based counterparts and even become competitive with dynamic random access memory (DRAM).
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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Computer memory is in need of an upgrade. We’ve been DRAMming for a long time now and I’m lookin forward to something better. Perhaps this is it.
Who thinks Insecurity of Things is a good idea? To the extent that this kind of automation and data collection is required it’s a very bad idea to connect it to the internet in any capacity.
Internet of Things… a fad that seems destined to linger. Has it ever actually done anything useful though? OK, I seriously could see “big scale” hotels being able to utilize it effectively: having a way to monitor on every floor, every light bulb, every refrigerator, every thermostat setting, every television, and for luxury suites, every power bed setting.
I imagine it like the Mercedes I drove once, that had ‘his’ and ‘hers’ customized keys. The motorized mirrors and seats, the HVAC system and even the radio presets … all cued by the key. Kind of nice. Hotels could be the same. Remember your preferred “settings”, and set the controls for your assigned room accordingly.
Could also work out well for offices, for similar reasons. Especially for coffee machines and refrigerators, on-floor dishwashers and the like. The devices would report back centrally if doors ajar, or clean-cycles forgotten-to-run.
But in another sense, it just seems like happy-sappy techie masturbation. Believe it or not, in the Dark Ages of the 1970s, people made coffee, kept up with dirty dishes in the dishwasher (having NO automatic cycles). The thermostat was set to 72, and everyone learned to like it. Or not. Your personal preferences didn’t matter. If you needed a little desk fan, you could buy one. On your own nickel.
Window blinds had pull-chains, windows actually could open. It was cold in the winter, hot in the summer. So what… that was until then the way of the world.
That same no-complaints-can-do attitude built the Apollo program, which actually got to the Moon and back. A half dozen times, actually. Low-res calculations were done on pieces of metal or wood called “slide rules”, engineers and accountants had mechanical pencils, no one but the exceptionally odd men in the back office had a computer. Of her own.
Stuff got done.
While granted the whole economy is now markedly (NOT “infinitely” or “exponentially”) more productive today, having higher total and per-person output than ever before, I also think our kowtowing to ever-more-tech is not necessarily helpful to the bottom line. More BETTER people gives as much ‘bang for the buck’ as more better equipment and technologies. Most of the time. Sometimes technology is outrageously enabling -— what “CNC” machines are today is nothing short of magical.
So… there you are.
Yet another Goatish reply.
GoatGuy