November 2010

Grandis has been awarded a new contract from DARPA to use their spintronics and magnetic-material expertise and develop non-volatile spin logic applications: which promises non-volatile, ultra-fast, radiation-hard and radically lower power consumption.

Development work will focus on integrating magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) materials capable of sensing very small magnetic fields with nano-magnets performing logic operations. The goal is to demonstrate non-volatile spin logic circuits operating at ultra-fast speeds of less than 1 nanosecond and ultra-low power consumption of less than 10 atto-Joules per operation. Such performance coupled with the inherent non-volatility of spin logic devices will enable not just significant reductions in the active power consumption of microprocessors but also the virtual elimination of standby power consumption.

Here's a nice introduction-to-spintronics video from the Tanaka Laboratory at the University of Tokyo. They explain what is Spintronics, and how it can be applied to memory devices (hard disks and MRAM) and information processing with low power consumption: