RACETRACK MEMORY

Racetrack memory is a non-volatile memory device. Racetrack would offer storage density higher than comparable solid-state memory devices like flash memory and similar to conventional disk drives and also have much higher read/write performance. It is one of a number of new technologies trying to become a universal memory in the future.

Racetrack memory uses a spin-coherent electric current to move magnetic domains along a nanoscopic permalloy wire about 200 nm across and 100 nm thick. As current is passed through the wire, the domains pass by magnetic read/write heads positioned near the wire, which alter the domains to record patterns of bits. A racetrack memory device is made up of many such wires and read/write elements.
Racetrack memory uses electrical currents to "push" a magnetic pattern through a substrate.

There are two ways to arrange racetrack memory.


1. A series of flat wires arranged in a grid with read and write heads arranged .

2. U-shaped wires arranged vertically over a grid of read/write heads on an underlying substrate. This allows the wires to be much longer without increasing its 2D area, although the need to move individual domains further along the wires before they reach the read/write heads results in slower random access times.