Traditional computing systems keep track of where data is stored on a given memory device and then access that location — in the case of magnetic storage devices, by manipulating the storage medium to position the desired location under a reader. That makes the speed of the moving disk or tape a limiting factor in how fast the information can be accessed. Flash memory does away with this problem by creating a faster, solid-state drive — but it’s far more expensive than magnetic storage.
Racetrack memory promises the best of both worlds: a storage medium that’s as fast as flash but as inexpensive as magnetic, with theoretical storage capacities that outstrip both. Racetrack memory works by moving not the disk but rather the data itself. Bits are stored in the subatomic “domains” between areas of magnetic charge on a nanowire 1/100,000th the width of a human hair. These domains are then moved along the wire like cars on a racetrack, positioning them under the detector at speeds 1 million times faster than magnetic disks.
The trick is to move them very precisely, given that the domains in question can be as small as a single atom. Reliably manipulating domains was prohibitively complex and expensive until 2010, when IBM scientists became the first in the world to measure acceleration and deceleration of domains at different voltages. Along with the writing and reading techniques developed earlier at Almaden, this breakthrough in domain movement provided the third component theoretically necessary to make a working racetrack memory device.
Engineers have yet to develop a prototype for consumer use, but Stuart Parkin, who began researching racetrack memory at Almaden in 2004, believes that such devices will eventually replace solid-state drives in the same way SSDs replaced magnetic hard disks.
“One can have a solid-state memory with the same low cost of a disk drive but with a performance 10 million times better,” Parkin said. “It could replace disk drives; it could replace flash; it could replace most solid-state memories. And it would enable much simpler computers in the future.”
In 2021, a team of New York University researchers led by Professor Andrew Kent announced another step toward the future Parkin imagined: They discovered that materials called ferrimagnets, which produce smaller magnetic fields than conventional materials like iron and nickel, worked better to create the stable magnetic objects on which racetrack memory relies. This discovery represents another breakthrough in the ongoing project of bringing racetrack memory out of the lab and into consumer markets.