Boffins have hard-drive breakthough

According to the popular science magazine New Scientist, the boffins used nanosecond pulses of electric current to push magnetic regions along a wire at 110 metres per second. This is a hundred times faster than was previously possible.

The idea of moving magnetically-stored data electronically has been kicking around since IBM patented a similar concept called a magnetic "racetrack" in 2004. However, experiments back up the idea were disappointing.

The Germans think that where Big Blue went wrong was to use longer electric current pulses and that meant they got stuck.

Instead the Germans created magnetic domains in a wire less than a micron wide made of permalloy and shorter pulses.