A new architecture for a nanomemory chip could boost the capacity of flash memory cards to around 100GB. Engineers from Imperial College London, Durham University, and the University of Sheffield report on their prototype, called Magnetic Domain-Wall Logic, in the new issue of the journal Science. From a press release:
The technology is based on the discovery by Professor (Russell) Cowburn and colleagues that by using nanotechnology it is possible to reproduce the key functions of semiconductor electronics in microchips using only the 'spin' of electrons, which is responsible for magnetism, rather than the more conventional 'charge' that traditional microchips use.
This has allowed them to construct a completely new architecture for electronics in three dimensions rather than the two dimensional flat structure of conventional microchips, an approach Professor Cowburn compares to using cupboards instead of table tops for storing goods.
