A Paradigm Shift in RAM Is About to Make Computing Unstoppable

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Your computer wouldn’t be very useful without RAM, which is short for random access memory. These chips function as the temporary storage for an operating system, and speed is of great importance, as they’re constantly needing to access bits of memory to keep everything running smoothly. For more than two decades, the most advanced version of this technology—magnetoresistive RAM, or MRAM—has been the go-to tech for the kind of intense computing necessary in industrial, military, and space applications.

Now, a breakthrough discovered by scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has illustrated how a mechanism in a laser beam can control the magnetic state in solids, which the scientists describe as a “paradigm shift” in our understanding of the behavior between light and magnetic materials. The results of the study were published in the journal "Physical Review Research."

“This discovery has far-reaching implications, particularly in the domain of data recording using light and nano-magnets,” Amir Capua, head of the university’s Spintronics lab and study co-author, said in a press statement. “It hints at the potential realization of ultra-fast and energy-efficient optically controlled MRAM and a seismic shift in information storage and processing across diverse sectors.”

RAM works by using incredibly tiny electromagnets that, once magnetized with voltage, can encode as “on” or “off”—1s and 0s in binary speak.

 

 

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If memory... ha... serves, I believe one of the things they were looking into while developing MRAM to begin with, is that it can retain information during a power loss... unlike standard RAM that needs constant refreshing during each of its cycles to maintain the information.

Hence during a power outage, your MS doc you've been working on (without turning on the save function) used to bring forth pain and frustration if your power went out or battery died (remember those days?).