Prof Parkin took advantage of electrons' spin to make cheap storage possible
A British scientist whose work made it possible for hard disks to radically expand in size has been awarded the Millennium Technology Prize.
Prof Stuart Parkin developed a type of data-reading head
capable of detecting weaker and smaller signals than had previously been
possible.
The innovation allowed more information to be stored on each
disk platter.
The foundation behind the award said he had made Facebook, Google, Amazon and other online services possible.
"Parkin is a leading innovator in the field of spintronics,
which relies on the magnetic spin of electrons rather than their charge
to store bits and is one of the most successful fields of nanotechnology
yet," said
Technology Academy Finland.
"[His] innovations have led to a huge expansion of data
acquisition and storage capacities, which in turn have underpinned the
evolution of large data centres and cloud services, social networks,
music and film distribution online."
Previous winners of the one million euro ($1.38m; £824,000)
award - which is announced every other year - include web inventor Tim
Berners-Lee and the
Linux operating system kernel developer Linus Torvalds.
Those selected are judged to have invented something that
either has changed or has the power to change people's lives for the
better, ideally on a global scale.
Sensitive detector
Prof Parkin's field of expertise is a branch of physics called spintronics - or spin electronics.
In this case, the word "spin" refers to a quantum mechanical
property of an electron that can be likened to a planet turning around
its axis.
The professor says hard disks are able to
store roughly 1,000 times more than they would have been without the
use of spintronics
Just as planets can rotate clockwise or anti-clockwise,
electrons are said to be able to spin up or down - an action that sets
up a magnetic field.
The analogy is not perfect, but in short the phenomenon can
be exploited to store bits of data on atomically-thin magnetic
structures.
Prof Parkin made this possible by building on the observations of two
Nobel Prize
winners - Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg - to create a highly sensitive
detector capable of discerning small magnetic fields at room
temperature.
"The spin valve sensing device allowed one to detect much tinier magnetic fields and therefore smaller magnetic regions in a
magnetic disk drive," he explained to the BBC.
"The information in a disk drive is basically stored as magnetic regions in a very thin magnetic film.
"So, now we could detect much smaller regions than was
possible before, in fact about 1,000 times smaller because of the
extreme sensitivity of the spin valve sensing device."
The falling cost of storage has made it affordable to build giant data centres
The work was carried out for IBM, and the firm commercialised
the technology in 1997. It soon became an industry standard, allowing
disk capacity to quadruple roughly once a year for several years.
That not only made it possible to store more information in
computers but also meant it became affordable to build giant data
centres.
"The modern world is sustained by our ability to store all
our information in magnetic disk drives essentially in the cloud, so
that you can instantaneously carry out Google searches, instantly stream
music and movies," added Prof Parkin.
"None of those things would be possible without the immense
capacities of magnetic disk drives at the very low cost that is possible
today... thanks to this spintronic sensing device."
Racetrack memory
The professor continues to work for IBM, and is hoping to
spearhead a further storage revolution with an experimental technology
he is developing for the firm called Racetrack memory.
Prof Parkin is currently working on a new type of storage codenamed Racetrack memory
The goal is to exploit spintronics to create a new type of
storage that would consume less energy than magnetic disk drives but be
as high-performing as solid-state flash memory - a more expensive
alternative.
"By building a three-dimensional device with tiny nanoscopic
wires in which a whole series of magnetic regions are raced to and fro,
it can increase the storage capacity of conventional solid-state memory
100-fold," he said.
"It would be as fast and reliable as conventional solid state
memories but would be as cheap and capacious as a magnetic disk drive -
basically containing the best of both worlds."
While the professor is keen to highlight how his work has
made it possible for the internet to offer vast amounts of information
and entertainment, he acknowledges that the technology has also been
used for more controversial purposes - including the storage and
analysis of large amounts of information about the public by cyber-spy
agencies.
Even so, he said he had few regrets.
"Of course it's a concern if people misuse data if they can," he said.
"It's like any scientific discovery or development - it can be used for good and sometimes used for bad.
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