Skyrmion bubbles, an alternative computational technology?

[Curufinwe_wins]

Yea that's right you have never heard of Skyrmions, but it sounds kinda like Skyrim so it must be awesome, right? Right.

 

 

Skyrmions, discovered just a few years ago, are tiny islands of magnetism that form in certain materials. If you wrapped one up into a sphere, its magnetic fields would point away in all different directions—so they stay in neat little packages and don’t unravel easily.

Scientists found they could prod these skyrmions to move using electric currents, and an idea was born: could we use them to represent 1s and 0s in computer memory?

 

The long and short of it... Yes you probably can, and it has some benefits over say semiconductor based computing in that these 'little itty-bitty' packets of magnetism (think of them as the purely magnetic photons) in that their movement/creation really doesn't and can't change the composition of the material they are generated in. This could in theory allow for significantly better scaling and a better technological threshold for computing performance than semiconductors themselves can provide.

 

 

Transistors, which form the basis of today’s computing, are tiny devices that stop the flow of electric current (off and on, 1 and 0). But there’s a limit to how small we can make them, and we’re running up against it. Scientists want to find a way to create 1 and 0 by using physics phenomena that don’t actually change the atomic structure of the material—for example, making a line of skyrmions that could be read as 1s (skyrmion) and 0s (no skyrmion). 

But the only way we knew how to make new individual skyrmion bubbles on demand was at very, very low temperatures (below -450 degrees Fahrenheit) with expensive equipment like spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopes—not practical for making consumer devices like laptops, and not even easy for most scientists to make so they could study them.

 

This latest improvement clearly (as there is an impressive set of gifs in the source that show) allow for relatively mass production of these skyrmions at room temperatures (a major milestone for future large-scale developments).

 

 

“These aren’t exotic materials—they’re widely used already in the magnetics industry,” said Argonne materials scientist Axel Hoffmann, the corresponding author on the paper. The electric current needed to move the skyrmions is much lower than what’s used in other experimental memory alternatives, like racetrack memory, he said.

“With this system we can explore many of the theoretical ideas on skyrmion physics that have been proposed over the past few years,” said Argonne physicist Suzanne G.E. te Velthuis, who co-authored the study. 

“We think this method could apply to many more materials,” Jiang said. “This opens many new opportunities for the future.”

 

Is this technology going to be on the shelves tomorrow? No.

 

Is this technology going to be on the shelves 10 years from now? Probably not, but it is another potential interest as intel and other corporations look to go 'beyond silicon'. 

 

 

Source for discussion on Skyrmion research implications and the cool gifs (check these things out, the tri-layer is 3nm thick...)---- http://www.anl.gov/articles/argonne-scientists-announce-first-room-temperature-magnetic-skyrmion-bubbles

 

Source for original paper if you are into that (which I hope you are) http://arxiv.org/abs/1502.08028

 

 

#HPCMatters

 

@LinusTech @nicklmg

 

***Disclaimer, I am employed by Argonne National Laboratories, but am in no way connected to said research or even said subdivision within ANL. Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.***

[The Official Czex]

Yea that's right you have never heard of Skyrmions, but it sounds kinda like Skyrim so it must be awesome, right? Right.

 

 

I still think quantum computing is better, but OK...

[Curufinwe_wins]

I still think quantum computing is better, but OK...

If nothing else, it is certainly more mature. But what better way to find out what is actually best than having real options to discover?

 

Also disclaimers are important in the research community, and impulsively I felt the need to mention my own potential bias towards this development.

[The Official Czex]

If nothing else, it is certainly more mature. But what better way to find out what is actually best than having real options to discover?

 

Also disclaimers are important in the research community, and impulsively I felt the need to mention my own potential bias towards this development.

 

I highlighted it for fun because I am actually that bored. Isn't quantum computing sort of similar, but on a smaller scale?

[Curufinwe_wins]

I highlighted it for fun because I am actually that bored. Isn't quantum computing sort of similar, but on a smaller scale?

Well yes and no. This technology is likely more suited towards information storage than for direct computing, (at least that is the type of work they are aiming for at this particular moment)

 

Quanta themselves are smaller than these skyrions, certainly, but working with them is such a massively different issue than say working with these packets of magnetism (which is basically like a super small version of the water based computers stanford and others have been working on http://gizmodo.com/stanford-built-a-new-kind-of-computer-that-uses-water-d-1709504695)

[The Official Czex]

Well yes and no. This technology is likely more suited towards information storage than for direct computing, (at least that is the type of work they are aiming for at this particular moment)

 

Quanta themselves are smaller than these skyrions, certainly, but working with them is such a massively different issue than say working with these packets of magnetism (which is basically like a super small version of the water based computers stanford and others have been working on http://gizmodo.com/stanford-built-a-new-kind-of-computer-that-uses-water-d-1709504695)

 

Cool! Thanks for starting this thread. I hope more people take interest. 

[Curufinwe_wins]

Cool! Thanks for starting this thread. I hope more people take interest. 

That's always the goal. Create interest.

[blackadder]

That's always the goal. Create interest.

well you have it. Are they talking about losing the inverse relationship (x/1=x^-1) if so im interested in the algebraic nature of this. Considering the beautiful symmetries in electromagnetism.

Edit: ah never mind, not what i thought,its much better. Controlling the charge sufficiently they would be able to make drips or streams it looks like.if its rocking the same properties as the fluids.

[Curufinwe_wins]

well you have it. Are they talking about losing the inverse relationship (x/1=x^-1) if so im interested in the algebraic nature of this. Considering the beautiful symmetries in electromagnetism.

Edit: ah never mind, not what i thought,its much better. Controlling the charge sufficiently they would be able to make drips or streams it looks like.if its rocking the same properties as the fluids.

Yep right at the edit. It's like an evolution past solid state storage using conventional circuits.

Although I must say. I have read the paper but by no means am an expert on what they are trying to do. Only that it is awesome and has a great deal of potential moving forward.

[blackadder]

Yep right at the edit. It's like an evolution past solid state storage using conventional circuits.

this reminds me of an old electron experiment. Just a leather belt fixed around a turning wheel would gather a charge and release a few electrons at a time once charge built up enough for it to ark. Reading about the fluids now (150 pages) i look forward to reading more about this in time. Also nice disclaimer. People often forget science is always evolving and the latest paper may not have it 100% but that's no reason to throw out the whole model and discredit the process.

[Deletive]

Well yes and no. This technology is likely more suited towards information storage than for direct computing, (at least that is the type of work they are aiming for at this particular moment)

 

Quanta themselves are smaller than these skyrions, certainly, but working with them is such a massively different issue than say working with these packets of magnetism (which is basically like a super small version of the water based computers stanford and others have been working on http://gizmodo.com/stanford-built-a-new-kind-of-computer-that-uses-water-d-1709504695)

I fee like this technology will definitely be useful for Storage. I don't think Quantum computing is really going to be useful for mainstream computing the way we are looking at it right now because having the technology running in single digit kelvin isn't going to ever reach the consumer market. I think Transistors are going to be around for a long long time in the consumer market. COmpute market will turn to either of these technologies tbh.

[Curufinwe_wins]

this reminds me of an old electron experiment. Just a leather belt fixed around a turning wheel would gather a charge and release a few electrons at a time once charge built up enough for it to ark. Reading about the fluids now (150 pages) i look forward to reading more about this in time. Also nice disclaimer. People often forget science is always evolving and the latest paper may not have it 100% but that's no reason to throw out the whole model and discredit the process.

Van de Graff generators are a boat load of fun. Also thanks on the disclaimer haha, and just as you said I also look forward to seeing what this process evolves to.

[Curufinwe_wins]

I fee like this technology will definitely be useful for Storage. I don't think Quantum computing is really going to be useful for mainstream computing the way we are looking at it right now because having the technology running in single digit kelvin isn't going to ever reach the consumer market. I think Transistors are going to be around for a long long time in the consumer market. COmpute market will turn to either of these technologies tbh.

that was the thing that got me about these skyrmion bubbles. They have appear to be very stable, and producible apparently already at room temperature, and yet we had never observed them before. Now, one major thing that hasn't been talked about is the mechanical resistance of these packets, but even if they can only be used in stationary mass storage, that would be huge for servers and cloud storage.

[Curufinwe_wins]

Bump for knowledges sake.