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Researchers develop silicon ReRAM chip, send warning shot to Flash memory

Sarah Silbert — Sun, 20 May 2012 06:54:00 EST

Does the word ReRAM ring a bell? No? Well, the key point is that it's much faster than NAND memory, and it's making its way into chips from Elpida, Sharp and Panasonic. Further proof that ReRAM is on the up and up? Researchers at University College London have used this technology to make a chip that operates at 100 times the speed of standard Flash memory. The device is composed completely of silicon oxide, which improves the chip's resistance, and it doesn't require a vacuum to work (which makes it cheaper to produce). But this new chip is more than just a faster alternative to Flash; its ability to move between different states of conductivity means it can be configured as a memristor, or a device that handles both data-processing and storage tasks. In the long term, researchers hope this technology can pave the way for silicon oxide CPUs -- and UCL is already using this design to help develop transparent memory chips for mobile devices. Need to know more? Feast your heart on the gritty details via the link below.

Researchers develop silicon ReRAM chip, send warning shot to Flash memory originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 May 2012 06:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Korean bendy memory could make plenty of trendy tech

Daniel Cooper — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:29:00 EST

Flexible displays aren't much good unless there's flexible memory alongside. It's been attempted before, but bending memory pushes the individual transistors so close that they begin to interfere with one another -- causing degradation and shortening the device lifespan to just a single day. The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has solved the problem by pairing transistors with memristors, which are immune to such annoyances. By fixing both inside a flexible substrate, you can push them as near as you like without any electo-radiation spanners jamming up the works. This also means that the flexible RRAM behaves just like flash memory; maybe in the future it won't just be antennas sewn into our clothes.

Korean bendy memory could make plenty of trendy tech originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NC State University researchers create soft memory machine, just add water

Joseph Volpe — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 17:38:00 EST

We're not big fans of the word moist, nor the objects it usually describes. But if you call it mushy, slap some storage capabilities into it and develop it in a North Carolina State University lab -- well, then we're all smiles. Which is exactly what researchers at the school have accomplished with their "similar to the human brain" memory device (mmmm... brains). Known as memristors, these biocompatible electronics are ideal for harsh, wet environments that other wussier tech dare not tread. Ripe with the wobbly "properties of Jell-O," the squishy water-based gel houses gallium and iridium alloys that fluctuate between on / off electrically conductive and resistive states -- that's 1 and 0, respectively. Capacity for the gelatinous invention isn't yet optimized for significant real-world use, but you can bet this thing'll be making its way into Krang's exo-suit anyday now. Bill Cosby approved PR after the break.

Continue reading NC State University researchers create soft memory machine, just add water

NC State University researchers create soft memory machine, just add water originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 17:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP Labs teams up with Hynix to manufacture memristors, plans assault on flash memory in 2013

Ross Miller — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:00:00 EST

The memristor's come a long way since being hypothesized back in 1971. If you ask HP Labs, the history of this particular memory technology didn't hit its next milestone for almost four decades, when the company produced the very first memory resistor chip. Just last month, the Labs group proved its little transistor could handle logic and data storage, and as of today, the company's announcing a joint development agreement with Hynix Semiconductor, with a goal of bringing these chips to the market -- and rendering flash memory obsolete.

That challenge against flash (not a very popular naming convention these days, it seems) was thrown down by HP Labs Senior Fellow Stan Williams, who posits that the memristor is "an universal memory that over a sufficient amount of time will replace flash, DRAM, magnetic hard disks, and possibly even SRAM." But onto the immediate, albeit aspirational goal (i.e. not a commitment, which he stressed on multiple occasions): Williams hopes to see the transistors in consumer products by this time 2013, for approximately the price of what flash memory will be selling for at the time but with "at least twice the bit capacity." He also claims a much smaller power requirement of "at least a factor of 10" and an even faster operation speed, in addition to previously-discussed advantages like read / write endurance.

With Hynix on board, the goal is to make these "drop-in replacements" for flash memory, whereby the same protocols and even the same connectors will work just fine. For HP, however, Williams says there'll be an initial competitive advantage for the company due to its comfort level with memristors' unique properties, but that other companies will be encouraged to license the technology and experiment with new possibilities in hardware design. Williams wouldn't give any specific product examples where we might initially see the memristor, except to repeat that it'll be anywhere and everywhere flash memory is. Fighting words, indeed. We normally don't get excited about minute hardware components -- not often, at least -- but we gotta say, the seeds of the future look mighty interesting. Can't wait to see what germinates. Highlights from our talk with Williams after the break.

Gallery: HP Labs' Memristor Milestones

Continue reading HP Labs teams up with Hynix to manufacture memristors, plans assault on flash memory in 2013

HP Labs teams up with Hynix to manufacture memristors, plans assault on flash memory in 2013 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP touts memristor development, bleak future for transistors

Vlad Savov — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 08:18:00 EST

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.

HP touts memristor development, bleak future for transistors originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Apr 2010 08:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Are memristors the future of Artifical Intelligence? DARPA thinks so

Joseph L. Flatley — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:54:00 EST

New Scientist has recently published an article that discusses the memristor, the long theorized basic circuit element that can generate voltage from a current (like a resistor), but in a more complex, dynamic manner -- with the ability to "remember" previous currents. As we've seen, HP has already made progress developing hybrid memristor-transistor chips, but now the hubbub is the technology's applications for artificial intelligence. Apparently, synapses have complex electrical responses "maddeningly similar" to those of memristors, a realization that led Leon Chua (who first discovered the memristor in 1971) to say that synapses are memristors, "the missing circuit element I was looking for" was with us all along, it seems. And of course, it didn't take long for DARPA to jump into the fray, with our fave DoD outfit recently announcing its Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics Program (SyNAPSE -- cute, huh?) with the goal of developing "biological neural systems" that can "autonomously process information in complex environments by automatically learning relevant and probabilistically stable features and associations." In other words, they see this as a way to make their killer robots a helluva lot smarter -- and you know what that means, don't you?

Read - New Scientist: "Memristor minds: The future of artificial intelligence"
Read - DARPA: "Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics"

Filed under: Science

Are memristors the future of Artifical Intelligence? DARPA thinks so originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP shows off first hybrid memristor-transistor chip

Donald Melanson — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:24:00 EST

HP broke some considerable new ground by creating the very first "memristor" earlier this year, but it looks like it didn't rest on its laurels for very long, as it has now also taken the wraps off the first hybrid memristor-transistor chip at (where else?) the inaugural Memristor and Memristor Systems Symposium. According to the researchers at HP Labs, the memristors are able to do the job of the transistors they replace more efficiently, letting you use less of them when space is a priority, or the same amount or, conceivably, more of 'em to get some increased performance, which the researchers say could "give Moore's Law a boost." As if that wasn't enough, the researchers also say that memristors could also allow for faster, smaller, and more energy-efficient flash storage, and allow for field-programmable gate array (or FPGAs) that are not only more efficient, but considerably less expensive as well. Of course, there's plenty more experimenting that needs to be done, but HP says that the first commercial circuits using memristors could arrive within the next three years.

[Via Slashdot]

Filed under: Desktops, Misc. Gadgets, Laptops

HP shows off first hybrid memristor-transistor chip originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP creates radical 'memristor' technology, brains explode

Joshua Fruhlinger — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:06:00 EST

"Memristors" are one of several memory technologies that have been theorized and promised in the coming years. HP has made a real memristor, however, and the way solid state memory is created and stored could have just changed forever. First theorized in 1971, memristors are basic circuits like resistors, capacitors, and inductors. These circuits are able to store data by allowing their levels of electrical resistance to fluctuate between high and low, or 0 and 1 to a computer. Like flash memory, they retain that data without power -- except they do it all on one circuit and at the speed of D-RAM. In the end, we could be looking at a whole new kind of storage, as long as someone can figure out how to get these things onto integrated circuits. Nerds hats off, return to your fanboyism -- now.

Filed under: Storage

HP creates radical 'memristor' technology, brains explode originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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