New Magnetic Gates for Cool Computing
Spinner
Birmingham, UK
Researchers at the University of Notre Dame have magnetic gates capable of performing operations like the transistors used in CPUs, but with a fraction of the power usage. Intel has already expressed interest.
Source: Nature.comAlexandra Imre and her colleagues from the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, have created such a logic gate from a pattern of tiny nickel-iron magnets, each about 100 nanometres long. Their magnetic fields can point in one of two directions, which represent the computer bits '1' or '0'. Because each nanomagnet influences the state of its neighbour, a range of input signals at one side of the pattern can trigger a predictable outcome at the other.
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