IBM proposes the death of flash memory and hard drives

IBM’s Almaden Laboratory has been outlining a new form of memory that it says will replace both flash memory storage and platter-based hard drives.

The new memory is called racetrack memory and uses the boundaries in the magnetic fields of microscopic wires manufacture using nanotechnology. Electron spin is used to write code into the memory and retrieve it.

“Today digital data is stored in two main types of devices: magnetic hard disk drives and solid state random access memories,” said the company.

“At Almaden we are working on a radically new storage-memory technology based on recently discovered spintronic phenomena.

The memory will boost storage capacity a hundredfold compared to today’s systems, allowing much more storage without affecting form factors or generating any more heat.

The Almaden team has already showed it can both manufacture the nanowires and read the magnetic fields within them but say commercial versions of the memory could take as long as seven years to develop.