LOS ANGELES, April 26 (Xinhuanet) -- IBM said on Monday that it is to collaborate with Stanford University in the development of a new nanotechnology - "Spintronics", which could lead to much faster computer chips and other electronic achievements.

    IBM, the world's largest information technology company, said scientists at the company's Almaden Research Center and Stanford University has formed the IBM-Stanford Spintronic Science and Applications Center (SpinAps).

    "SpinAps researchers will work to create breakthroughs that could revolutionize the electronics industry, just as the transistor did 50 years ago," said Robert Morris, IBM vice president and director of the Almaden Research Center.

    Spintronics is a technology about precisely controlling electron spins, which have two possible states, either "up" or "down." Aligning spins in a material creates magnetism. Understanding and controlling this property is central to creatinga whole new breed of electronic properties, according to IBM.

    By taking advantage of these properties, IBM produced giant magnetoresistive (GMR) disk drive heads in 1997, enabling a 40-fold increase in data density over the past seven years.

    Industrial experts believe the next areas of spintronics research include Magnetic random access memory (MRAM) chips and microprocessors.

    MRAM would be able to store a substantial amount of data, consume little energy and operate at a much faster rate than conventional flash memory. It would lead to rapid-fire digital cameras or computers that start working as soon as the power comeson.

    IBM and Stanford will also collaborate to try to create logic chips -- such as microprocessors.

    IBM said research at the SpinAps Center, based at IBM's AlmadenResearch facility in San Jose, California, and Stanford's nearby Palo Alto campus, will involve about 20 IBM researchers and a number of Stanford professors and students. Enditem