Nothing is more frustrating that watching that circle spinning in the centre of your screen, while you wait for your computer to load a programme or access the data you need. Now a team from the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds may have found the answer to faster computing: sound.

For computers to run faster, we need to create "solid-state" drives that eliminate the need for moving parts -- essentially making the data move, not the device on which it's stored. Flash-based solid-state disk drives have achieved this, and store information electrically rather than magnetically. However, while they operate much faster than normal hard disks, they last much less time before becoming unreliable, are much more expensive and still run much slower than other parts of a modern computer -- limiting total speed.

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 already harnessed for use in electronics and other areas of engineering, this is the first time surface acoustic waves have been applied to a data storage system.

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