Pages

April 13, 2011

Accelerate data storage by several orders of magnitude? Ultra-fast magnetic reversal observed

Accelerate data storage by several orders of magnitude? Ultra-fast magnetic reversal observed

A newly discovered magnetic phenomenon could accelerate data storage by several orders of magnitude.

With a constantly growing flood of information, we are being inundated with increasing quantities of data, which we in turn want to process faster than ever. Oddly, the physical limit to the recording speed of magnetic storage media has remained largely unresearched. In experiments performed on the particle accelerator BESSY II of Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, Dutch researchers have now achieved ultrafast magnetic reversal and discovered a surprising phenomenon.

In magnetic memory, data is encoded by reversing the magnetization of tiny points. Such memory works using the so-called magnetic moments of atoms, which can be in either "parallel" or "antiparallel" alignment in the storage medium to represent to "0" and "1."

No comments:

Post a Comment