Believe It Or Not, Singing Can Make Computer Run Faster; Acoustic Sound Waves Move Data At Minimal Power

A team of researchers from the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds have found that singing to the data can actually help the computer run faster.

The new research has found that certain types of sound waves can move data quickly, using minimal power thereby resulting in faster computing, reported Business Standard.

Most of the world's data is held on hard disk drives - magnetic disks that work like miniaturised record players, with the data read by sensors that scan over the disk's surface as it spins. But as this involves moving parts, there are limits on how fast it can operate.

Researchers Tom Hayward and John Cunningham together came up with a completely new solution which is passing sound waves across the surface on which the wires are fixed. They found that the direction of data flow depends on the pitch of the sound generated - in effect they "sang" to the data to move it, reported Phys.Org.

The sound used is in the form of surface acoustic waves - the same as the most destructive wave that can emanate from an earthquake. Although surface acoustic waves are already harnessed for use in electronics and other engineering areas, this is the first time that the waves have been applied to a data storage system.

"The key advantage of surface acoustic waves in this application is their ability to travel up to several centimetres without decaying, which at the nano-scale is a huge distance," explained Tom Hayward from University of Sheffield.

"Because of this, we think a single sound wave could be used to 'sing' to large numbers of nanowires simultaneously, enabling us to move a lot of data using very little power. We are now aiming to create prototype devices in which this concept can be fully tested," Tom added.

The findings was published in the journal Applied Physics Letters.