“Spintronics” a potential revolution in computing
A technique which could allow computers to use much less power has had a significant breakthrough. For the first time it’s been shown that the way electrons “spin” can be manipulated and used for data storage at room temperature.
The technique, dubbed spintronics, aims to solve one of the biggest problems with traditional computing storage in which the 1s and 0s of binary coding are represented by how an electron is charged. The BBC explains that as computing develops and chips get smaller and packed with more electrons, it takes more and more power to move them around. That in turn creates heat issues, which is becoming even more of a problem as computing devices get more portable.
Spintronics takes advantage of the fact that each electron can also be in one of two states through quantum mechanics, which have been described simply as “spinning up” and “spinning down”; that’s more of a physical analogy than a literal description, but does make the point.
In the past, it’s only being possible to manipulate this spin at temperatures well below the freezing point of water. However, a project at the University of Twente in the Netherlands has shown it is possible to do so at room temperature.
At the moment the researchers are concentrating more on proving the principle behind the study. And this is only one stage in the practical process: actually transferring the process to silicon chips would have its own challenges.
However, the possibilities are there. One working idea at the moment is that a system could manipulate both the charge and “spin” of each electron, effectively meaning it can carry twice as much information. That would drastically reduce the number of electrons needed to do the same work, thus cutting power demands. Alternatively, the same number of electrons could be used to carry out a task considerably quicker.
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