6 ms·

Racetrack Memory -- 100,000 Times Faster Than Today's -- May Arrive in 5-7 Years

ajays 16y ago
"100,000 times faster than today's" ... hard drives. Not RAM. Or Flash. Plus, I'm very skeptical of claims that contain weasel-words like "may" and "could" and "possibly".
- estherschindler 16y ago
  It's like beta software. Until it ships, the best anyone can say is "It may." When it ships, then they can say, "It does."
drallison 16y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racetrack_memory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racetrack_memory is worth a read.
jasongullickson 16y ago
You have to wonder about someone working on "memory of the future" who makes analogies like this: " "It’s like reading an entire VHS cassette in less than a second." I don't know about the rest of you but I think we're close to done using magnets to store data...
- jerf 16y ago
  This used the word "spin" prominently, which leads me to believe that it is using spintronics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spintronics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spintronics , which may involve the word "magnetic" but is not actually based on magnets in the way you meant it.
  - jasongullickson 16y ago
    Wow, that was an awesome read; thanks for passing it along! I was mostly just poking fun at the reference to VHS but you are correct in your assessment of the "license" I was taking in my reference to magnetism.
teamonkey 16y ago
This reminds me a little of reel-to-reel tape storage. It seems to me that the throughput could be enormous but the seek time would vary according to how physically long the race track was, so if you double the capacity you double the seek time. Or am I getting the wrong end of the stick?
jallmann 16y ago
The article did not make this clear, but this is non-volatile memory (according to Wikipedia). Anyone know this compares to memristors? Or is that apples and oranges?
- ScottBurson 16y ago
  It's certainly in the same general category of nanotechnology-enabled non-volatile solid-state memory technologies. Off the cuff, I would guess (emphasizing guess) that memristors will have better access times while racetrack looks like it might be denser. But the big question is manufacturability. There's already a pilot project to produce memristor memory. Racetrack, even if it's superior in the abstract (and I'm not sure it is), might just be too late to the party. It's not even completely clear that memristors will edge out flash, which after all has massive momentum at this point, but I think the odds are good -- memristors are (or can be) much faster.
vietor 16y ago
Did it strike anyone else as intellectually dishonest (or really sloppy?) that that entire article seemed to come from a parallel reality where SSDs don't exist? I get that this would be an improvement over current SSDs. But to not even mention them while at the same time saying thigns like: "In a first step, one could envisage attacking the Flash market and replacing the USB sticks with something much faster..." "One could imagine the technology being useful for both small mobile devices (such as smartphones) and large systems (such as servers)." Yes! If only there were some sort of non-volatile, low power, shock resistant, storage technology which were orders of magnitude faster than rotating hard disks! We could call it some sort of Solid State Drive, and it would totally change the storage market!
devmonk 16y ago
Related: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1907318 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1907318
caustic 16y ago
It seems like they were right about Singularity!

ajays 16y ago

"100,000 times faster than today's" ... hard drives. Not RAM. Or Flash. Plus, I'm very skeptical of claims that contain weasel-words like "may" and "could" and "possibly".

estherschindler 16y ago
It's like beta software. Until it ships, the best anyone can say is "It may." When it ships, then they can say, "It does."

drallison 16y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racetrack_memory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racetrack_memory is worth a read.

jasongullickson 16y ago

You have to wonder about someone working on "memory of the future" who makes analogies like this: " "It’s like reading an entire VHS cassette in less than a second." I don't know about the rest of you but I think we're close to done using magnets to store data...

jerf 16y ago
This used the word "spin" prominently, which leads me to believe that it is using spintronics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spintronics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spintronics , which may involve the word "magnetic" but is not actually based on magnets in the way you meant it.
- jasongullickson 16y ago
  Wow, that was an awesome read; thanks for passing it along! I was mostly just poking fun at the reference to VHS but you are correct in your assessment of the "license" I was taking in my reference to magnetism.

teamonkey 16y ago

This reminds me a little of reel-to-reel tape storage. It seems to me that the throughput could be enormous but the seek time would vary according to how physically long the race track was, so if you double the capacity you double the seek time. Or am I getting the wrong end of the stick?

jallmann 16y ago

The article did not make this clear, but this is non-volatile memory (according to Wikipedia). Anyone know this compares to memristors? Or is that apples and oranges?

ScottBurson 16y ago
It's certainly in the same general category of nanotechnology-enabled non-volatile solid-state memory technologies. Off the cuff, I would guess (emphasizing guess) that memristors will have better access times while racetrack looks like it might be denser. But the big question is manufacturability. There's already a pilot project to produce memristor memory. Racetrack, even if it's superior in the abstract (and I'm not sure it is), might just be too late to the party. It's not even completely clear that memristors will edge out flash, which after all has massive momentum at this point, but I think the odds are good -- memristors are (or can be) much faster.

vietor 16y ago

Did it strike anyone else as intellectually dishonest (or really sloppy?) that that entire article seemed to come from a parallel reality where SSDs don't exist? I get that this would be an improvement over current SSDs. But to not even mention them while at the same time saying thigns like: "In a first step, one could envisage attacking the Flash market and replacing the USB sticks with something much faster..." "One could imagine the technology being useful for both small mobile devices (such as smartphones) and large systems (such as servers)." Yes! If only there were some sort of non-volatile, low power, shock resistant, storage technology which were orders of magnitude faster than rotating hard disks! We could call it some sort of Solid State Drive, and it would totally change the storage market!

devmonk 16y ago

Related: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1907318 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1907318

caustic 16y ago

It seems like they were right about Singularity!