Reduced energy consumption - a very important issue in the development of computer technology. If you reduce the electricity consumption of the most important components of your computer, you can reduce its size, reduce heat and increase efficiency. That's why researchers scratching their heads over how to create a new memory chips that consume much less resources than the existing counterparts.
All existing today on the market types of computer memory use electrical charges to store data. DRAM-memory chips, which we all use every day, store charge in capacitors. Depending on whether the capacitor is charged or not, the bit value is equal to 0 or 1.
Bit value may change at lightning speed, but there is this technology and its disadvantages. They can be safely attributed permanent loss of data when you turn off the memory chip from the power source. Actuators SSD partially solve this problem, but even these information is not completely safe, and there is a real risk of its extinction when the disk is disconnected from the battery for a long time.
Among other things, modern memory chips require large amounts of energy to their work, as well as emit a lot of heat. That's why scientists and trying to find a way to avoid the need for a permanent connection to the power supply, but to keep the speed of technology DRAM.
Researchers at Cornell University have made a discovery that could lead to a new generation of computer memory chips. Professor John Chiron, we send Darrel Ralph and Dan found that data can be stored in the memory created from bismuth ferrite, with such memory does not need a permanent power supply.
Bismuth ferrite - a chemical compound with multiferroic properties when in one material coexist simultaneously two or more types of ferro-ordering. In other words, the material is assumed to be constant magnetic field, which is always electrically polarized. Under the influence of electric charge on the material it changes the polarization, and when the polarization is changed, it remains in this position permanently until the material once again begin to affect electricity. This same polarization can be used to store valuable data bits.
Opening of scientists to avoid unnecessary costs of electricity, as the electrical current now only need to change the polarization, rather than constantly keep the information storage. Prior to this development there were similar, but they have to work at extremely low temperatures. The memory is based on bismuth ferrite may operate at normal room temperature without any problems.
While researchers have created a test device that stores only one bit of information, whereas a standard DRAM chip contains millions of transistors and capacitors. Scientists still have a lot of work, but perhaps they were the beginning of a whole new era in the field of computer technology.
The potential of this discovery is really very big. But as the research is at a very early stage, to be held not less than ten years before we will be able to see on store shelves first chips that are based on this technology.