What they are describing here is Spintronics; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spintronics
Would be nice if the paper they reference was public access 🙄
Edit; another reference (not the same paper) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11503717/
wtf thats a real thing? I thought my physics professor was just joking when he said spintronics once
Following the successful laboratory demonstration, a prototype chip could be ready by 2030, the scientists said in the study.
The researchers think a further reduction in the thickness of the Mn3Sn layer will reduce power consumption even more. The next challenge, they added, will be to develop a commercially viable bulk manufacturing process capable of building the device at scale.
Aside from the viability of producing the chips at scale with rare minerals, there’s another item I don’t see answered: they’ve produced one of these in the lab — but that’s like producing one transistor. Modern CPUs have ~20billion transistors. How tight can these new systems be packed? If they’re fast and efficient but 20 billion of them would take up a football field, that’s not going to be very useful.
What we heard: “You can get the processing power you need at 1/1000th the scale!”
What investors heard: “Data centers just got 1000x more valuable!”
