One shouldn’t lose sight of what we are doing here. We aren’t just trying to do something better; we are offering something entirely different and new.
- Jason Robinson
In the early days of the computer, calculators were room-sized and public demand was low. Now, it’s the reverse. Digital technology has become smaller and faster, and our dependence on it has grown.
We are almost desensitised to a stream of facts about the startling rate at which this is occurring. In 2016, IBM found that humans now create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data daily. From the start of this decade to its end, the world’s data will increase 50 times over.
The basic building blocks of electronic devices, such as the transistor, work by moving packets of charge around a circuit. A single unit of charge is an electron, and its movement is governed by semiconductors, commonly made from silicon. But technology based on these principles is now reaching a point where it cannot get much smaller or faster. A paradigm shift is due.
“There have been many failed attempts to oust silicon from its predominance,” reflects Professor Mark Blamire, Head of Materials Science at Cambridge. “Something has to be done because the technology can’t be scaled to smaller sizes for very much longer. It’s already a major source of power consumption. There’s no obvious competitor, so in a sense the opportunity is there.”
Blamire and his colleague Dr Jason Robinson are leading several major programmes investigating one such competitor, known as superconducting spintronics.
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Image:Spinning top
Credit: Creativity103
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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