CRASH-PROOF processor chips that crunch magnetic data rather than the electronic stuff could soon be on the way. Like a computer’s hard disc drive they’ll continue to store data after a power cut, but they’ll also be impervious to radiation, making them ideal for use in spacecraft.
The first step towards such a chip has been taken by Russell Cowburn and a team at the University of Durham, who have made a magnetic “NOT gate”. This is the simplest digital logic gate, which simply flips digital 1s to 0s and vice versa. Cowburn’s device exploits “spintronic” phenomena—using the fact that…
