IBM Talks up Race Track Storage

By Greg McNevin

April 15, 2008: IBM says it may have a stunning replacement to NAND flash memory on its hands, thanks to a new breakthrough in spintronics physics.

Dubbed Race Track memory, the new technology stores data on lengths of wire using the spin of an electron. Acording to IBM Fellow and lead researcher at its San Jose Labs, the technology will revolutionise the industry with improved read/write times, higher capacities, greater durability and reliability, and do it cheaper than currently possible.

It’s not just higher capacities that IBM is promising with the technology though, but significantly higher with the company claiming current devices such as MP3 players could hold 100 times what they do today.

While exciting the technology exists in the realm of all things quantum and could take up to seven years to reach any form of consumer electronics. But if it does reach market, the prospect of a one terabyte will no doubt be revolutionary for data storage and transfer, and worrying from a security standpoint.

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