The next generation of nonvolatile memory devices, slated to first replace flash memory and eventually hard disk drives, will be called "racetrack" memories, according to IBM Corp. fellow Stuart Parkin and colleagues at the company's Almaden Research Center (San Jose, Calif.) Using spintronics--the storage of bits on the magnetic spin of electrons rather than their charge--a proof-of-concept shift-register has now demonstrated by IBM. The prototype encodes bits into the magnetic domain walls along the length of a silicon nanowire--called the racetrack. IBM uses "massless motion" to move the magnetic domain walls along the nanowire for the storage and retrieval of information. In the figure IBM shows the horizontal "dragstrip" racetrack that it is currently prototyping (bottom) as well as the vertical racetrack that it eventually plans to commercialize (top).

IBM's goal is to drill down into the third dimension to store spin-polarized bits on a sunken racetrack-shaped magnetic nanowire.

Using an area of silicon one micron wide and 10 microns high, IBM plans for its first-generation racetrack to store 10 bits compared to 1 bit, thereby replacing flash memory. Eventually, its plan is to store 100 bits in the same area, which would dense enough to replace hard disk drives.

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