Cognitive and Spintronic Technologies

January 22, 2015

Conventional computing technologies are innately two-dimensional - now dramatic improvements in these technologies have been achieved.

Conventional silicon-based memory and computing technologies are innately two-dimensional. Dramatic improvements in these technologies have been achieved over the past half-century by shrinking the underlying memory and computing elements to sizes that are close to fundamental physical limitations. We discuss novel spintronic and cognitive technologies that are innately three-dimensional and which rely, not on the electron’s charge, as used today, but rather on currents of spin-polarized electrons and ions, respectively.  These new approaches promise solid-state memory-storage devices, namely Racetrack Memory, with capacities rivaling that of magnetic disk drives but with much higher performance and endurance, and computing devices that could have energy efficiencies comparable to mammalian brains.

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