IBM researchers experiment with 9nm nanotube transistors

TechnologyReview reports IBM researchers are experimenting with 9nm nanotube transistors:

The smallest carbon-nanotube transistor ever made, a nine-nanometer device, performs better than any other transistor has at this size.

For over a decade, researchers have promised that carbon nanotubes, with their superior electrical properties, would make for better transistors at ever-tinier sizes, but that claim hadn't been tested in the lab at these extremes. Researchers at IBM who made the nanotube transistors say this is the first experimental evidence that any material is a viable potential replacement for silicon at a size smaller than 10 nanometers.

"The results really highlight the value of nanotubes in the most sophisticated type of transistors," says John Rogers, professor of materials science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "They suggest, very clearly, that nanotubes have the potential for doing something truly competitive with, or complementary to, silicon."

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MIT researchers develop up to 10x faster Fourier transform algorithm

The Tech Report writes data compression and wireless signal processing may get a speedup as MIT researchers have developed a new Fourier transform process that is up to ten times faster than the existing function.

A group of MIT researchers has developed a new algorithm that improves upon the fast Fourier transform. In some situations, the algorithm is claimed to be 10 times faster than the existing function, which is good news for computing applications. The fast Fourier transform allows computers to decompose irregular signals into their component frequencies; it's used in everything from data compression to wireless signal processing, so a faster version has potentially wide-ranging applications.

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IBM researchers achieve magnetic storage of just 12 atoms wide

IBM researchers at the company's Almaden facility have created a prototype of a magnetic storage solution that uses just 12 atoms per bit, making it 100 times more dense than current systems used in HDDs. It's unlikely to hit the consumer market any time soon though, currently the technology requires a temperature of around half a degree above absolute zero for maximum stability.

Using an unconventional form of magnetism known as 'antiferromagnetism,' the team of researchers have been able to create an experimental magnetic memory device twelve atoms in size; blowing past Moore's Law - the observation of component density doubling roughly every two years originally made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in a 1965 paper on integrated circuits - and paving the way for exascale storage systems in the future.

Unlike traditional magnetism, where nearby magnets are all polarised in the same direction, antiferromagnets alternate between north-polarisation and south-polarisation; as a result, it's possible to pack them significantly closer together than with traditional ferromagnets.

Offering a density some one hundred times greater than today's magnetic hard-drives or solid-state storage chips, IBM's breakthrough paves the way for future exascale storage systems with discs holding upwards of 200TB each.

Full details at Bit Tech.

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