Tilted nanomagnets open door for advances in computing

The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, means that the high-density storage of computers could now be incorporated directly into the circuits that perform calculations. This would significantly reduce energy dissipation, increasing the speed of those calculations and improving computer performance.

“To reduce the power draw and increase the speed, we want to be able to manufacture a computer chip that includes memory so that it is close to the computational action,” said Sayeef Salahuddin, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, and head of the research team at Berkley.  

“However, the physics needed to create long-term storage are not compatible with integrated circuits.”

Creating a magnetic field for long-term magnetic memory requires power and space, which is why up until now computational and storage systems have always been separate.

Previously, Salahuddin and his colleagues had discovered that passing a current through the rare metal tantalum creates polarity in magnets without an external magnetic field. However, packing them extremely close together on a chip negated this effect. In its latest research, the team discovered that by tilting the nanomagnets slightly, they could be aligned in close proximity yet retain the desired properties.