Instant Powered On Computers In Near Future?
Imagine switching on your computer and it's instantly on; no post, no loading of the OS, no resuming from hibernation - its instantly on and exactly where you left off. Sounds a bit like virtualization but in reality this could very well be your next computer. Thanks to a clever materials science technique that uses silicon crystal as a nanoscole vise to squeeze another crystal into a more useful shape may launch a new class of computers and devices that remember their last state, even when the power is turned off.
According to the research data put together by NSLS (National Synchrotron Light Source) this all could be possible. The team which was led by Joseph Woicik of NIST, used calculations to demonstrate that by layering a thin film of strontium titanate onto a pure silicon crystal, they could distort the titanium compound into something it normally wasn't. The so-called "ferroelectric" compound that might serve as a fast and efficient medium for data storage.
"In contrast to a traditional data storage material, which records data as a pattern of magnetic regions pointing in different directions, a ferroelectric can do the same with tiny regions of polarized electric charges. Ferroelectric memories are used, for example, in smart cards for subway systems. Ferroelectric structures that could be built directly onto silicon crystals, the most common materials base for consumer electronics, have been sought for years for a variety of applications, including nonvolatile memory (data that is not lost when power is turned off) and temperature or pressure sensors integrated into silicon-based microelectronics. One of the potentially biggest prizes would be ferroelectric transistors that could retain their logic state (on or off) without power, which could enable computers that switch on instantly without needing a boot stage." a press release from NIST stated.
Perhaps sometime in the not so distant future, researches will be able to utilize the data provided by the researches at NSLS to create silicon that powers up instantly.
