Silicon transistors are the stuff all our dreams of android sheep are made of, but there will ultimately be a limit to
how many of them you can squish together inside a processing chip. The progressive avoidance of physical limitations by moving to
yet more minuscule dimensions is admirable, but some folks at HP seem to believe the answer lies in a whole different technology. The company has been talking to the
New York Times about its memristor (memory resistor) development, which promises to perform both data processing and storage tasks (even without an electrical charge), while also being capable of stacking in a three-dimensional array that would allow for vast scaling potential down the line. Promises for the future include a
three nanometer memristor that can switch on and off in a nanosecond, as well as a 20GB per square centimeter memory density that we might expect to arrive within three years. If we believe the dudes in the white coats, that is. The important thing is that memristor-based storage has already been tested to successfully perform "hundreds of thousands" of read and write operations without failing, so the potential is indeed there. Now we just need a bit of luck and a smidgen of patience.
posted April 8th 2010 8:18AM
Wow, that's some huge news.
There seems to be so many positives to this technology, I guess the question has to be asked... what's the negative?
Super expensive? (for now)
@Hazdaz
Indeed. I can't think of any negative.
@Hazdaz
The question still hanging in the air is is it viable as a consumer technology.
There's been plenty of similat exciting technologies that have died in te design board. Slight advances in technology are cheaper than huge leaps. This might survive for being in somewhat lesser than a huge leap.
@pavlindrom
Losing your lifes work cause it got mistaken for Sugar cubes and added to a coffee?
@Hazdaz
Yeah, there are a few questions yet to be answered here. Can a memristor processor be built on current architectures, or will we need specialized OSs to run on them? Is the memory aspect intended to be used for RAM, or storage? "Be sure to back up your processor before replacing it."
@Ipadkiller
"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" is a novel by Philip K Dick and is most likely the reference he was going for.
@Ipadkiller
Not a reference to Google Android! Duh. It's a book!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_Sheep%3F
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"Silicon transistors are the stuff all our dreams of android sheep are made of,"
article starts with this sentence. uh, we're not all android fanboys like you.
@CtrlBurn, memristors are not semiconductors and cannot be used as processors, at least not as efficient ones in a way we are using them today. You can, tho, arrange them into arrays to 'simulate' semi-conductivity but by the time we could actually do non-linear calculations on them, we will have graphene transistors so memristors would probably be used only as solid-state memory units and in specific, pre-defined signal processing appliances. The future of computing will probably be graphene, unless we figure out a way to efficiently use quantum properties to do our bidding.
@Hazdaz
Never doubt the dudes in white coats!
THEIR CRAZY!
@incognito
My understand was that memristor is like a neuron, combined in the network can both store data and perform calculations. So while you increasing storage you also increasing calculation capacity.
@CrymeLord Well then, what were saying is; it's either the world-famous book title he was paraphrasing, or the author is such a Google fanboy he actually wants to install Android 2.1 on the sheep he thinks about at night time.
Which is it, Mr Savov? Come on; Ipadkiller needs to know!
@Hazdaz
Not really... heard about memristors 2-3 years ago, stories like these a simply re iterating and making noise.
@excelsium
No one is saying that this is a brand new idea, but sometimes it takes years to bring a technology from the labs out into a practical form... if ever.
This particular news story makes it sound like it is much closer to being a real product than previous news stories I have read about memristors.
I personally love seeing HP get back to what it used to be... a much more research-based company, rather than simply being just another printer or computer-maker. The old HP, as well as companies like Xerox and Bell Labs pretty much invented most of the technology-related stuff we use today.
I will have nightmares tonight.
Yeah, way too early in the morning for that pic.
If HP is the scientist, who is Abnormal?
@DariaMorgendorffer
Everyone?
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: [to Igor] Now that brain that you gave me. Was it Hans Delbruck's?
Igor: [pause, then] No.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Ah! Very good. Would you mind telling me whose brain I DID put in?
Igor: Then you won't be angry?
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: I will NOT be angry.
Igor: Abby Someone.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: [pause, then] Abby Someone. Abby who?
Igor: Abby Normal.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: [pause, then] Abby Normal?
Igor: I'm almost sure that was the name.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: [chuckles, then] Are you saying that I put an abnormal brain into a seven and a half foot long, fifty-four inch wide GORILLA?
[grabs Igor and starts throttling him]
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Is that what you're telling me?
It looks like Mr. Bean as a drug addicted old man.
@Professor Hubert J Farnsworth Haha, very true.
@Professor Hubert J Farnsworth looks like Marty Feldman to me.
Wow! That's good to hear!
I can remember the day that I heard about these bad boys vividly!
These are the babies that are going to merge and replace our RAM and HDD/SSD's!
@HellFury
Yep, and since they won't lose their state when you shutdown, you'll have an instant on OS. You can turn off your computer and turn it on again instantly from where you left off. Read/write speeds will be as fast as RAM for regular storage, this is a very exciting technology.
Is Vlad the only one working today?
@Motlee
I suspect the rest of the team are camped outside one infinite loop in tents telling scary nerd stories like the one about the "day of the 5k addressable memory" and "when the exec team got greedy and ate up all the profits killing the Amiga"
oh that and nips of fine rum and illegal cigars
How does it store state absent of any electrical charge?
magic
@savagemike Just like your brain :)
Who the HELL is he? O yeahz, @HellFury: Something to replace BOTH RAM and storage? Sounds good... But I think they'll still be separate, with large capacities, slower speed for storage, and low capacities, high speed for RAM.
What hump?
@The Doctor Wasn't it on the other side?
@p0p0 It was Abby-something.
That guy looks like the Mole Man from American Pickers.
Get ready for non-volatile memory
get ready for this advanced tech in...... 10 years. Yeah this thing won't be coming out for a while.
And its supposed to run on AC not DC. So massive problems are abound.
Snow White, look out!
20GB a sq/cm? that's about half of where we are at now with flash? can someone fact-check this guy