The HP Memristor Debate

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Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday July 25, 2012 @10:44AM from the what's-in-a-name dept.

New submitter AaronLS writes "There has been a debate about whether HP has or has not developed a memristor. Since it's something fairly different from existing technologies, and similar in many ways to a memristor, I think they felt comfortable using the term. However, the company has been criticized for using that labeling by former U.S. patent officer Blaise Moutett. On the other hand, had HP created a new, unique label, they would have probably gotten flack for pretending it's something new when it's not. Will anything positive come from this debate? Electrical engineering analyst Martin Reynolds sums it up nicely: 'Is Stan Williams being sloppy by calling it a "memristor"? Yeah, he is. Is Blaise Moutett being pedantic in saying it is not a "memristor"? Yeah, he is. [...] At the end of day, it doesn't matter how it works as long as it gives us the ability to build devices with really high density storage.'"

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What the hell? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-25 10:49 · Score: 5, Funny

I feel like I'm eavesdropping in the middle of a conversation between two mental patients.
1. Re:What the hell? by Yvan256 · 2012-07-25 13:48 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Nope, that's just one patient talking to himself.
Hmmm ... by Grindalf · 2012-07-25 10:50 · Score: 5, Funny

Someone's pinched their hysteresis curve? Groan ...

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Memristors by Master+Moose · 2012-07-25 11:08 · Score: 4, Insightful

For those like me that went huh?
The memristor ( /mmrstr/; a portmanteau of "memory resistor") was originally envisioned in 1971 by circuit theorist Leon Chua as a missing non-linear passive two-terminal electrical component relating electric charge and magnetic flux linkage. More recently the memristor definition was generalized by Leon Chua to cover all forms of 2-terminal non-volatile memory devices based on resistance switching effects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor
Personally, I still have no idea.

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1. Re:Memristors by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-25 11:17 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Summary of the memristor and this controversy at Memristor Identity Crisis.
2. Re:Memristors by Hatta · 2012-07-25 11:19 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Keep reading. The basic idea is here:
  
  The resistance of a memristor depends on the integral of the input applied to the terminals (rather than on the instantaneous value of the input
  It's like a resistor but the resistance varies based on the current applied to it in the past.
  
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What gives? As long as it's close enough... by jiriw · 2012-07-25 11:16 · Score: 5, Insightful

'They' say it isn't a true memristor because its data deteriorates a bit over time. But ... isn't that true of all other current basic electronic components as well? Capacitors have some leakage, making it a 'bit' a resistor. Inductors do not have a perfect Q. Even at its resonance point some energy is dissipated as heat, dampening the resonance circuit it is part of and making it a 'bit' a resistor as well. Resistors are most of the time at least 'half' a winding on a 'coil'... when alternating current passes through them with a high frequency, they act a 'bit' as an inductor. And they may have a parasitic capacitance with other components near it.
So, what gives if this HP invention is not the 'perfect' memristor. As long as it's close enough, it would do. In other words: if it quacks like a duck...
1. Re:What gives? As long as it's close enough... by FrankSchwab · 2012-07-25 12:09 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  The comment above (http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3004785&cid=40771055) is more informative - a real Memristor is defined in terms of electric and magnetic fields. The HP memristor looks just like a real one, but doesn't involve a magnetic field at all.
  
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2. Re:What gives? As long as it's close enough... by Matimus · 2012-07-25 12:34 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  I came here to say precisely this. It isn't an 'ideal' component. Which is what the theory is based on. But then neither is any electrical component you can think of. Even resistors stop being linear at very high or very low voltages / currents. Anybody ever seen an ideal current source? An ideal voltage source? And ideal op-amp? Its not ideal because it is a real device. Ideal components only exist on paper.
  
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3. Re:What gives? As long as it's close enough... by neonsignal · 2012-07-25 13:47 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  The issue here isn't the imperfection of the HP device. It is a matter of semantics.
  The 'memristor' was conceived as a term to describe a basic device where the change in flux is related to the change in charge.
  What HP have produced is a device that substantially behaves like a memristor, if you are only measuring current and voltage at the terminals. That's useful if you want to build a memory device, since the behaviour is such that resistance will vary with the integral of the current through it.
  However, the physics by which the HP device works is not a physics of memristance. For practical purposes, that may not matter; it is a simple device with useful properties. But terminology wise, it is memristance behaviour, not an unqualified memristor.
  Equivalently, one can build an active circuit that uses a capacitor and a feedback loop to emulate an inductor. It isn't technically an inductor at all, but it does get called an "active inductor".
4. Re:What gives? As long as it's close enough... by martin-boundary · 2012-07-25 23:11 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Terminology IS important. Suppose HP gets a patent on their "memristor", and suppose someone else discovers a true memristor within 20 years. The HP "memristor" could set back the state of science with stupid patent lawsuits for a generation.
  Let's keep scientific terminology pure, and not let the business types hijack all our established terms for their marketing bullshit.
Re:Lousy summary by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-25 11:30 · Score: 2, Interesting

try NASA.
Re:Lousy summary by geekoid · 2012-07-25 11:56 · Score: 5, Insightful

ubrgeek my ass.

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The pot is black and has conflict of interest by Morgaine · 2012-07-25 12:02 · Score: 5, Interesting

Mouttet, a former U.S. patent officer who specialized in nanotechnology, has long argued that HP's technology is not really a memristor. "All HP is doing, in my opinion, is skewing the history to make it look like they were the originators of this technology and it is really not true", Mouttet tells Wired. "To me, this is unethical."
Former U.S. patent officer calls someone unethical. The mind boggles.
And as if that weren't enough, he has patents in the area himself and therefore cannot be a fair witness.
Skepticism about radical new devices is always healthy, but Mouttet's opinion on this topic inspires the opposite of confidence.

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1. Re:The pot is black and has conflict of interest by O('_')O_Bush · 2012-07-26 00:01 · Score: 2
  
  False dichotomy. I would want someone familiar or with expertise in the subject area, but without the conflict of interest of having patents themselves.
  
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Re:Lousy summary by tambo · 2012-07-25 12:39 · Score: 2

> I'm sorry, but I shouldn't have to RTFA just to understand the key word in the summary ("memristor"). It's sloppy writing not to explain it.
>
Couple with that the title "U.S. patent officer." There's no such thing.
Blaise Mouttet is a former patent *examiner* for the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. The USPTO currently employs over 6,000 patent examiners, each of whom is expected to be of "ordinary skill in the art." There's no indication that this individual's opinion is any more significant than that of any other electrical engineer.
Either it's an error, or the title was sexed up to fabricate an aura of expertise. Can anyone explain why this article made it to the front page of Slashdot?

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Re:Lousy summary by Ginger+Unicorn · 2012-07-25 12:44 · Score: 2

From looking at the diagram in TFA i'm just going to assume that they should have called it a flux capacitor.

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Re:Lousy summary by lewiscr · 2012-07-25 13:16 · Score: 2

I could accept "What's a memristor?" from a newbie, but a mid-6digit UID? There have been a plenty of memristor articles on /., going back to 2008.
Re:Lousy summary by narcc · 2012-07-25 13:20 · Score: 5, Funny

Should every summary take the time to explain every term that someone might not know?
Does every article about the iPhone need to explain that it's a smartphone product produced by Apple? (Apple is a California based company that produces computers and some consumer electronics. A smartphone is a cellular telephone based on a mobile computer, typically integrating features found in other portable computing and other personal electronics products. A cellular telephone is ... a network is ... )
If you don't know what a memristor is, first turn in your geek card, then punch the term in to HotBot. (HotBot was a popular search engine in the late 1990's. A search engine is ... )

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Re:Lousy summary by ChunderDownunder · 2012-07-25 15:32 · Score: 2

Well in defense of 6digit newbies, this awkward portmanteau does sound like Chinglish.
Wow... Is everyone clueless? by WaywardGeek · 2012-07-25 16:20 · Score: 5, Informative

The above comments were unusually clueless, so here's a new topic, way at the bottom.
Do any of the previous posters have any actual experience dealing with memristors? My phone rang off the hook when this BS story hit the Internet a few years ago. I worked at QuckLogic, where we built "memristors", but failed to have the marketing brilliance to call them anything other than "antifuses". I don't blame the guy at HP who did pull this off. That's how the game is played.
Here's reality. "Memristors" are the basis of Actel and QuickLogic antifuse based FPGAs. We had them characterized years before they were discovered by HP. The more charge you put through them, the lower the resistance. If you put current the other way, the resistance goes up. It was somewhat linear, so I have to beat myself up for not calling them memristors.
HP won the marketing round. However, people now have high expectations for this technology making something useful. If they want to make programmable logic out of it, they should talk to someone like me.

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Re:Lousy summary by Jesus_666 · 2012-07-25 23:52 · Score: 2

Yeah. Just like "transceiver" and "modem" this term will never catch on.

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Comment removed by account_deleted · 2012-07-26 02:16 · Score: 4, Interesting

Comment removed based on user account deletion