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HP Creates First Hybrid Memristor Chip
An anonymous reader writes "HP researchers have built the first functioning hybrid memristor-transistor chip. Lead researcher Stanley Williams and his team built the very first memristor — the '4th fundamental element' of integrated circuits after resistors, capacitors and inductors — back in April. Memristors can remember their resistance, leading to novel electronic capabilities. The new FPGA circuit uses memristors to perform tasks normally carried out by (many more) transistors and is therefore smaller, more power efficient and cheaper to make, HP says. Memristors could also turn out to be a more compact, faster alternative to flash memory."
But does it get better gas mileage??
Am I the only when that thought memristors would remain the the 5-10 year category for the next couple of decades? Granted, this is just a proof of concept chip but it is moving along very rapidly compared to most 'game changing' advances.
20 years of theory and work just to make the first memristor, less than a year to use the new memristor in a device that actually improves over the standard technology. So when will we see commercially available devices? Next year some time at this rate?
Is there a spice model available?
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Does anyone know what size features the chip was etched at? um? nm? That might give a clue how close it is to being used in other products.
m. It could be a while.
Does anyone know what size features the chip was etched at? um? nm? That might give a clue how close it is to being used in other products.
The memristors made in April were 50 nm wide
Turns out after resistors, capacitors,inductors and memristors the 5th fundamental element is... love?
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In general there are two ways to store data (at least in a RAM type memory module). You can either use a capacitor (like DRAM) or a flip flop (SRAM). The problem with a capacitor is that it looses it's charge after a certain amount of time, and has to be refreshed (which is why DRAM is relatively slow). A flip-flop can be used to store one bit, but in order to do that two separate latches are needed. One latch has 2-4 gates each having 2-8 transistors. All of a sudden there are over a dozen transistors used to store one but. A memristior does not actually help any calculations, it just hopefully make storing data much more efficent
"Williams says. Still, he predicts that memristors will arrive in commercial circuits within the next three years."
It seems fast because nobody was talking about these things for the last 30 years. It's only because of technological advances in circuit printing and general computing that we can make these things and integrate them without having to develop a lot of additional technology. The transistor is very old but only after developing a lot of supporting tech have we been able to shrink them down to fit billions in a processor. That same tech can already be applied to memristors. We don't need to wait decades before we can shrink a memristor down to practical levels for ICs.
Work Safe Porn
Dude...no more talking. Just puff puff pass...
-=Bang Bang=-
You joke but look at this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#Titanium_dioxide_memristor
Although the HP memristor is a major discovery for electrical engineering theory, it has yet to be demonstrated in operation at practical speeds and densities. Graphs in Williams' original report show switching operation at only ~1 Hz. Although the small dimension of the device seem to imply fast operation, the charge carriers move very slowly, with an ion mobility of 10E-10 cm2/(V s). In comparison, the highest known drift ionic mobilities occur in advanced superionic conductors, such as rubidium silver iodide with about 2*10E-4 cm^2/(V s) conducting silver ions at room temperature. Electrons and holes in silicon have a mobility ~1000 cm^2/(V s), a figure which is essential to the performance of transistors. However, a relatively low bias of 1 volt was used, and the plots appear to be generated by a mathematical model rather than a laboratory experiment.[8]
1Hz? Next!
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
They can replace SRAM cells, which take multiple transistors. They also retain state without needing power (similar to FeRAM, which can also replace SRAM). However, unlike FeRAM the memristor can also store analog values.
In the digital realm they're likely useful mostly as memory. However, given the analog properties, they could be useful in creating "fuzzy" neural nets.
Hybrid, transistor, and chip? No, no problem whatsoever. My problem is with memristor, and memristance. They were made up to describe a resistance "setting" being remembered by a variable resistor. And frankly, the only problem I have is that the word originated for written text, where it is fine. I, however, am a big fan of the spoken language and the flow of a well constructed sentence. For a car analogy, a memristor is like a faulty transmission in the car that is a sentence's flow. It lurches and degrades the overall ride.
-=Bang Bang=-
Binary was chosen earlier in computer work for it could represent accurately a digit representive such as 1001 equals 9. Also magnetic core memory could hold only the two states.
With memristors (once they are perfected) can have multi-state such as trinary (base 3) or decinary (base 10) eliminating all of the conversion that is neccessary in the present binary system that require cpu cycles. 123 in the decinary system represents 123 where in binary it would be 1111011 and need to be converted in order to be meaningful.
For instance I have heard for those studying DNA that using base 12 has certain benefits in directly expressing information. Perhaps this will open a whole new arena of possibility that previously could only be simulated in binary.
The mind can imagine many new possibilities if the memristor actually is.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
Things like these makes you remember that HP isn't just a company that makes crappy consumer products.
the plots appear to be generated by a mathematical model rather than a laboratory experiment
This is what I would say "NEXT!" for, but to each their own.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
This memristor technology sounds like it could be an ideal device for implementing neural nets. Anyone working on that, I wonder?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Is there any free circuit simulation software that includes simulated memristors for me to fool about with?
I still don't get quite how they work.
What I want to know is what is the recognized symbol for this new element? I see the one on Wikipedia, but is this the international standard, sanctioned by the IEEE?
I always thought of Creationism as the Raving Right's version of the Loony Left's Anthropogenic Global Warming-brightmal
From TFA: '''In order to be so flexible, however, FPGAs are large and expensive. And once the design is done, engineers generally abandon FPGAs for leaner "application-specific integrated circuits."'''
This isn't really true. The rising fixed costs of an ASIC is prohibitive for low volume embedded projects where a $1 FPGA will do just fine. High performance FPGA chips are about the same cost as a CPU and they are commonly used as reconfigurable co-processors for supercomputing applications or embedded DSP. And I get way more GigaOps per dollar with FPGAs than with a CPU and for much less power.
Modern SRAMs usually use fewer transistors than that. 6T SRAMs are common, for example. They use a pair of inverters to store the state (4 transistors) and a pair of transistors to connect the inverters to the data lines (6 total). The write operation then involves a drive signal with more power than the inverters, thus forcing the state change.
Maybe...so long as it isn't constantly fighting deceptipons.
Autopots! Transist and roll out!
-=Bang Bang=-
I believe what they mean is that the memristor is "fundamental" in that it provides a symmetrical link between electric charge and magnetic flux. A resistor is the link between current and voltage, a capacitor - voltage and charge, an inductor - current and magnetic flux, and a memristor - magnetic flux and charge. I think. I'm sure someone with a better grounding in electromagnetic physics can clarify this a bit.
1Hz? Next!
The application they talk about is the programmable transistors in FPGAs.
You can find FPGAs in all kinds of consumer electronics. Typically, the chip has some onboard flash from which it loads its configuration during power on. These transistors which load from flash during power on are the ones the researchers are talking about replacing with memresistors (memristors?). For this kind of application, a 1Hz write speed is completely reasonable. The write will be done once in the factory.
I'm standing right here, you insensitive clod!!
The book The Bottomless Well discusses the concept of "the refined energy pyramid" where each level is smaller and more useful than the one below it. Electricity and computer are two levels medium-high on the pyramid. The books shows how auto technology has been rising up the pyramid with increasing fractions of its energy level at more refined levels. The book says about 15% of a modern auto's energy density (excluding hybrids and plug-ins) is now electrical and increasing. Computing is growing too, replacing items like distributors, etc with more efficent computed actuators and increasing mileage. Memisters will probably more compact implement soem electronic functions the other three are used for now.
Wow...this is awkward...
-=Bang Bang=-
Careful with your comments there - DRAM is relatively slow because the capacitors used are tiny, so sensing the charge state is slow. The need to refresh is because it's a capacitor with non-zero leakage. Refresh cycles sometimes will delay normal accesses, but are not the reason that DRAM is slower than SRAM. The speed of memresistor memory reads will depend on the speed of sensing the state, and the speed of writes will depend on the speed of changing the flux.
It is the fourth fundamental linear circuit element. Transistors (I = k*V^2) and diodes (I = e^V) are not linear. Resistors V = k*I, capacitors I = k*dV/dt (the derivative is a linear operation), inductors V = k*dI/dt, memristors V=k(t)*I are linear.
The reason there are four linear circuit elements is clear if you write these equations in terms and flux and charge.