IBM’s “racetrack memory” could outpace both solid-state flash memory chips and computer hard disks, making it a technology that could transform not only the storage business but the entire computing industry, increasing the amount of data stored on a chip or a hard drive by a factor of a hundred.

It would use billions of ultrafine wire loops around the edge of a silicon chip — hence the name racetrack — and use electric current to slide infinitesimally small magnets up and down along each of the wires to be read and written as digital ones and zeros. Since the tiny magnetic domains have to travel only submolecular distances, it is possible to read and write magnetic regions with different polarization as quickly as a single nanosecond — far faster than existing storage technologies.