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HP Backs Memristor Mass Production
neo12 writes with news that Hewlett-Packard is teaming with Hynix Semiconductor, the world's second-largest producer of memory chips, to mass produce memristors for the first time. Quoting the BBC:
"HP says the first memristors should be widely available in about three years. The devices started as a theoretical prediction in 1971 but HP's demonstration and publication of a real working device has put them on a possible roadmap to replace memory chips or even hard drives. ... Steve Furber, professor of computer engineering at the University of Manchester, explained that the potential benefits lie in the fact that memristors are 'much simpler in principle than transistors. Because they are formed as a film between two wires, they don't have to be implanted into the silicon surface — as do transistors, which form the storage locations in Flash — so they could be built in layers in 3D,' he told BBC News. 'Of course, the devil is in the detail, and I don't think the manufacturing challenges have been fully exposed yet.'"
Not from a physicist point of view, but from engineer's.
I mean, I know it can store data by means of variable resistance. But how do you read and write? Specific voltages, currents, frequencies? If I understand correctly, it has only two terminals like a resistor. You just apply some variable voltage and measure the current. So how can one differentiate between a write and a read?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
For more info see The mysterious memristor
Or just search Google memristor ieee
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Ill let wiki do it for me
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#Potential_applications
Think flash drives with the access times of DRAM. Think of instant hibernate computers. Instead of having to write out to HD the memory could just remember where it was at. Another application they talk about is crossbar switches. Currently each node in a cross bar has some sort of 'memory' associated to it. Such that the crossbar can 'learn' what are good routes and bad ones. This would allow them to make crossbar switches much smaller and use less power. Crossbar switches are used many times with NxM sized computers and in large communication networks.
They have known about them for ages (since 1971). However, they have only recently figured out how to actually make them at micron sizes.
Now given that we have not seen what they can do. What speeds we are talking about ect... If they can make them however (and at current gate sizes, and volume) the NAND flash drives we use today will probably quickly become a niche product.
Typical application would be somewhere where you want to retain some sort of 'memory' of what is going on but do not want a processor involved. It has also been theorized you could use them for storage of n bits per resistor. So instead of 1 bit per location you could have 4 or even 16 bits. They are also nice in that supposedly you do not need to refresh them as often as we do now so they could also save power.
Yes these things are cool :)
Seriously, where will the work be done? Will HP set up the fab shop here, or in SK? Or set up multiple shops. I would love to see the DOD suggest to HP that they need to set up a shop here in the USA. We need to make certain that we have our electronics under control here. In addition, the DOD, NSA, etc needs to offer up contracts to American companies that produce equipment here. Why? Because we are increasingly seeing embedded virus, etc coming in from Asia.
among other things, memristive slime mold modeling and synaptic chain behaviours...
You choose which software to run. If you run software that you think is bloated, and everyone else thinks is swell, then you have only violated your own preferences. There is nothing wrong with the software, it's all in your head. I like my 2-gigabyte operating system much better than the 2-megabyte operating system I used in 1993, and I imagine I would like a 2-terabyte operating system very much. I bet it would do all sorts of awesome stuff, and have the kinds of visual effects that I think enhance the graphical experience. If you disagree, that's fine. Version 1.1 of Linux will still run as well as the day it was released, and you can use it.
As for me, I say bring on the bloat. I can hardly wait.
From what I've read about memristor's, they don't wear out like Flash does. They are also massively faster than Flash memory. Think of it as a hybrid of RAM and Flash.
In fact, from what I read I think these devices (if they live up to what people are saying about them) will be able to replace both RAM and Disks/SSD's. Instead we'd just have one set of primary memory where everything happens.
Now we just have to see if they can do what is postulated, and how much it will cost to manufacture. If cheap enough to be worth buying due to their benefits, then they will have a huge effect on computing.
They have known about them for ages (since 1971). However, they have only recently figured out how to actually make them at micron sizes.
Well, no, not quite. The effect was postulated decades ago, but it was purely theoretical at the time (well, okay, it has been emulated using complicated circuitry). Furthermore, it's not that scientists "figured out how to actually make them at micron sizes"... it's that the effect only comes to the fore at micron sizes, which is why it hadn't been discovered sooner.
No, the discovery is the ability to build a very simple implementation of this theorized circuit element, and its a mighty cool discovery indeed (someone linked to a IEEE article on memresistors... check it out, it's a great read, and does a very good job of explaining the theory and mechanism behind the operation of this particular implementation).
Memristor based crossbar switches will be extremely useful for two uses:
Shuffling data between VMs in a secure manner on a host such as an IBM 795 or a zSeries that has a large number of VMs in use for different tasks. This way a bunch of VMs that talk amongst themselves frequently (a DB server to an app server) will end up being able to do high I/O without that slamming the CPU.
Another use is tiered memory, where one has a machine with fast RAM and slow RAM, with slow RAM being exponentially faster than going to SSD or magnetic platters. If memristors become able to be printed on a large scale, perhaps we will see machines with 16-32 GB of DRAM, then 256-512 GB of memristive RAM that is used as both swap space, but also a persistant cache for the OS to boot from an image with, never touching the storage media until the OS is fully loaded and the user wants to load documents, or the OS is doing a backup.
In case you're wondering who Steve Furber is, he is also one of the original designers of the ARM CPU.
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