Moore's Law is a challenge. It's not a scientific principle.

Moore's Law tells the electronics industry what it should hope to do, however it can do it, based on the idea that, in 1966, the goal of 100% improvement every 18 months looked achievable for some time to come.

What most people don't know is that, in many cases, and in many different areas of technology, engineers and scientists have been blowing the Moore's timetable to smithereens.

They're doing it with breakthroughs, breakthroughs like spintronics. (The picture, by the way, is from a SUNY Binghampton page on spintronics. Binghampton has a deal with Seagate in this area.)

Spintronics is a bit of science that was science fiction when Moore wrote his 1964 article. It's a system for controlling the spin of individual electrons, then using that reliable control to save more data in less space than ever before.

IBM and Stanford have a new partnership to work on the science. It's really an agreement on how to pass the knowledge gained in Stanford labs into the private sector, through IBM. In exchange, IBM helps fund the research.

It's a very good thing indeed.