Scientists Create First Memristor: Missing Fourth Electronic Circuit Element(blog.wired.com)
blog.wired.com
Scientists Create First Memristor: Missing Fourth Electronic Circuit Element
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/04/scientists-prov.html
41 comments
The way I'm reading this, our storage capacity today is basically like a bubble wand or a carpenter's level. If you tilt the right side down then the bubble goes all the way up on the left, and if you tilt the left side down then the bubble goes all the way up on the right. This means that bubble wand can hold two values, 0 and 1. With this new process you can essentially tilt the wand a few degrees and have the bubble move only a couple inches and then stop, and then tilt the wand a few more degrees and have the bubble move a little more.
In this way you can store any value within a single "box." So instead of it taking 64 "boxes" to store 64 bits, with this new process we can essentially store this much information in a single box. And furthermore, each box is going to be an order of magnitude smaller than our existing boxes today.
This may well be the single most important day of our lives, technologically at least. The singularity is indeed near.
In this way you can store any value within a single "box." So instead of it taking 64 "boxes" to store 64 bits, with this new process we can essentially store this much information in a single box. And furthermore, each box is going to be an order of magnitude smaller than our existing boxes today.
This may well be the single most important day of our lives, technologically at least. The singularity is indeed near.
It's possible to store multiple bits in lots of devices, including capacitors and inductors. Intel has been shipping flash that stores multiple bits per cell for quite some time.
There's an interesting tradeoff between the size of the box, the number of bits, and the required detector. And, if you're going small enough, the charge of an electron.
There's an interesting tradeoff between the size of the box, the number of bits, and the required detector. And, if you're going small enough, the charge of an electron.
This is so big, it's tough to imagine our memristor based future. Please speculate wildly about humanity in the Memristor Age.
I don't think we'll have any keeping up with Moore's Law. In 5 years memristor storage will be everywhere. IBM will develop memristor processors for the Blue Brain project.
I don't think we'll have any keeping up with Moore's Law. In 5 years memristor storage will be everywhere. IBM will develop memristor processors for the Blue Brain project.
"This is so big, it's tough to imagine our memristor based future. Please speculate wildly about humanity in the Memristor Age."
Not since the inductor was discovered has there been such cause for rejoicing.
My guess is that people in this glorious new age will continue to be, by turns, noble, venal, kind, warlike, selfish, generous, stupid, wise, thoughtful and ignorant, and that life will go on much as it always has.
I find it hard to believe that this discovery/invention (as opposed to, say, the transistor, fission, the steam engine, the telegraph, quantum mechanics, et-bloody-cetera) is really going to alter the human experience for all time.
We will, however, have smaller iPods. And this is a cool discovery.
From a narrow, self-interested perspective, I wonder if this will end up having any impact on how computers look to the programmer. I'd guess not; I think this stuff will be used to make faster/smaller versions of what we already have, in much the same way the last 30 years of advances in processor design were used to make really fast IA instruction set chips. If I'm wrong, though, it'll be interesting learning how to program the things.
Not since the inductor was discovered has there been such cause for rejoicing.
My guess is that people in this glorious new age will continue to be, by turns, noble, venal, kind, warlike, selfish, generous, stupid, wise, thoughtful and ignorant, and that life will go on much as it always has.
I find it hard to believe that this discovery/invention (as opposed to, say, the transistor, fission, the steam engine, the telegraph, quantum mechanics, et-bloody-cetera) is really going to alter the human experience for all time.
We will, however, have smaller iPods. And this is a cool discovery.
From a narrow, self-interested perspective, I wonder if this will end up having any impact on how computers look to the programmer. I'd guess not; I think this stuff will be used to make faster/smaller versions of what we already have, in much the same way the last 30 years of advances in processor design were used to make really fast IA instruction set chips. If I'm wrong, though, it'll be interesting learning how to program the things.
I wonder if this will end up having any impact on how computers look to the programmer.
RAM is nothing more than just a cache mechanism for slower storage devices, and as such it could have been made transparent from the programming perspective (roughly the same way as other caching devices - Cache Level 1 ... Cache Level N, CPU registers).
The reasons RAM is still directly programmable are probably historical rather than technical. There is clearly a tendency though in many modern dynamic languages to hide direct memory allocation from the programmer.
So, my first guess is, memristors won't affect much the world of garbage-collected dynamic languages - they are sort of ahead of time already.
There is an interesting perspective, however, if you look at the OS level.
Firstly, some part of the file system which is read-only - mostly code - will not be copied or "loaded" anymore, it will be read directly by the CPU from where it lies in the FS.
Another important change here would be that memory pointers will persist. It is difficult to speculate on the possible impact, but it may be huge. It may even give rise to new programming languages - with or without direct pointer manipulation, I don't know.
As for data files, my guess is that "open", "save" and other common verbs will be eliminated. Instead, we'll work directly on the file and the system will somehow keep the modification history (and here's where the analog nature of memristors might help, or maybe not).
RAM is nothing more than just a cache mechanism for slower storage devices, and as such it could have been made transparent from the programming perspective (roughly the same way as other caching devices - Cache Level 1 ... Cache Level N, CPU registers).
The reasons RAM is still directly programmable are probably historical rather than technical. There is clearly a tendency though in many modern dynamic languages to hide direct memory allocation from the programmer.
So, my first guess is, memristors won't affect much the world of garbage-collected dynamic languages - they are sort of ahead of time already.
There is an interesting perspective, however, if you look at the OS level.
Firstly, some part of the file system which is read-only - mostly code - will not be copied or "loaded" anymore, it will be read directly by the CPU from where it lies in the FS.
Another important change here would be that memory pointers will persist. It is difficult to speculate on the possible impact, but it may be huge. It may even give rise to new programming languages - with or without direct pointer manipulation, I don't know.
As for data files, my guess is that "open", "save" and other common verbs will be eliminated. Instead, we'll work directly on the file and the system will somehow keep the modification history (and here's where the analog nature of memristors might help, or maybe not).
Not since the inductor was discovered has there been such cause for rejoicing.
Hilarious. I think that depending on the noise immunity properties they may increase storage density signifcantly, but it will be more along the lines of a sustaining rather than revolutionary product, in terms of impact. I doubt, due to imperfections in the manufacturing process, that we will ever be able to store a continuous analog signal with perfect fidelity. In fact, Shannon's law forbids that if it has to be sent along a channel, which it does.
Analog computing has been with us forever, we'll see if this makes it commercially viable for some applications. Good news, in any case.
Hilarious. I think that depending on the noise immunity properties they may increase storage density signifcantly, but it will be more along the lines of a sustaining rather than revolutionary product, in terms of impact. I doubt, due to imperfections in the manufacturing process, that we will ever be able to store a continuous analog signal with perfect fidelity. In fact, Shannon's law forbids that if it has to be sent along a channel, which it does.
Analog computing has been with us forever, we'll see if this makes it commercially viable for some applications. Good news, in any case.
From a narrow, self-interested perspective, I wonder if this will end up having any impact on how computers look to the programmer.
As far as I can see, the most likely case is that you might wind up with a single, huge, fast chunk of memory replacing both your RAM and your hard disk. That should change things somewhat from the programmer's point of view.
As far as I can see, the most likely case is that you might wind up with a single, huge, fast chunk of memory replacing both your RAM and your hard disk. That should change things somewhat from the programmer's point of view.
Not since the inductor was discovered has there been such cause for rejoicing.
Hilarious. I think that depending on the noise immunity properties they may increase storage density signifcantly, but it will be more along the lines of a sustaining rather than revolutionary product, in terms of impact. I doubt, due to imperfections in the manufacturing process, that we will ever be able to store a continuous analog signal with perfect fidelity. In fact, Shannon's law forbids it has to be sent along a channel, which it does.
Analog computing has been with us forever, we'll see if this makes it commercially viable.
Hilarious. I think that depending on the noise immunity properties they may increase storage density signifcantly, but it will be more along the lines of a sustaining rather than revolutionary product, in terms of impact. I doubt, due to imperfections in the manufacturing process, that we will ever be able to store a continuous analog signal with perfect fidelity. In fact, Shannon's law forbids it has to be sent along a channel, which it does.
Analog computing has been with us forever, we'll see if this makes it commercially viable.
I need someone with a strong understanding of free markets to help me out here; but if this is really so big, why hasn't HPQ skyrocketed?
I'm not being a smartass, I just really don't understand why we haven't seen financial implications of this find.
Edit In the interest of disclosure, I've bought some shares to put my money where my mind is.
I'm not being a smartass, I just really don't understand why we haven't seen financial implications of this find.
Edit In the interest of disclosure, I've bought some shares to put my money where my mind is.
Okay, I took the time to do some asking around with some finance friends of mine. Their opinions were that:
1) People in that sector don't really understand why this is a big deal.
2) It looks like just another "Breakthrough" in hi-tech; which is to say, a regular every-day occurrence. The fact that all articles point to nothing coming to the market for at least five to ten years also means that finance people aren't interested in the tech yet.
1) People in that sector don't really understand why this is a big deal.
2) It looks like just another "Breakthrough" in hi-tech; which is to say, a regular every-day occurrence. The fact that all articles point to nothing coming to the market for at least five to ten years also means that finance people aren't interested in the tech yet.
I don't know. Does anyone know if HP managed to patent it before they published it?
It looks like it:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...,
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...,
And another company has a related patent based on the usage of a memristor:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...,
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...,
And another company has a related patent based on the usage of a memristor:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...
Actually those seem to be related to a very different device which was in development in the same group -- an array of nanowires with single molecules at the intersections forming logical elements. Very cool, but very hard to fabricate, and not a memristor.
Updated: Actually only the second one has molecules at the intersections, the other two seem to be more general.
Updated: Actually only the second one has molecules at the intersections, the other two seem to be more general.
Eh, I must have been confused by the "pictures" posted of the memristor, because the patents describe the image that was getting shown in the articles. I'm not an EE by any stretch of the imagination, so I'd be inclined to take your word over mine.
Edit
I think this might be the correct one: http://www.google.com/patents?id=mWcGAAAAEBAJ
Edit
I think this might be the correct one: http://www.google.com/patents?id=mWcGAAAAEBAJ
Now I come to look at the image, you're right in that the new memristor architecture seems to a similar crossbar-style geometry similar to some of their previous inventions.
It's possible that the first or the third one you posted might be general enough to encompass the memristor system as implemented, but I don't think either of them is specifically related to the new let's-diffuse-ions-across-a-thin-semiconductor-film memristor idea.
It's possible that the first or the third one you posted might be general enough to encompass the memristor system as implemented, but I don't think either of them is specifically related to the new let's-diffuse-ions-across-a-thin-semiconductor-film memristor idea.
They should have called it flux capacitor, because that's what it is.
"Building an analog computer in which you don't use 1s and 0s and instead use essentially all shades of gray in between is one of the things we're already working on," says Williams. These computers could do the types of things that digital computers aren't very good at –- like making decisions, determining that one thing is larger than another, or even learning."
How else do they think analog computers worked in the first place?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_computers
You can implement that stuff with caps, op amps and resistors. I don't know, maybe the substances they use have better differential nonlinearity characteristics across temperature.
All you need is a transistor and the proper bias voltage to create a simple analog computer.
How else do they think analog computers worked in the first place?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_computers
You can implement that stuff with caps, op amps and resistors. I don't know, maybe the substances they use have better differential nonlinearity characteristics across temperature.
All you need is a transistor and the proper bias voltage to create a simple analog computer.
OK, I've finally finished reading the Nature paper. To me the interesting, yet bothersome, thing about this design is that in contrast to the past fifty years of trends in electronics, it actually has moving parts. We're not just sloshing electrons around the place, we're actually moving dopant atoms through an amorphous solid, by applying ridiculously enormous electric fields. My worry is whether this will wind up being durable, or whether the response is going to change after these atoms have been yanked back and forth a few billion times. The paper certainly doesn't say anything about extensively testing these systems.
This discovery should lead to very cheap NVRAM. What new ways of doing business will arise when a computer with 32x4GHz cores and 16 TB of memory costs $2000 TCO/year?
Disks will no longer be the performance bottleneck of cutting edge systems. Instead it will be network latency. I think that a very important problem will be the geographic distribution of information to minimize latency for users and maintaining consistency of those replicas.
Additionally, the current model of software installation will become obsolete. A very important current problem is how to deliver applications over the network with good performance and stability. I think that we need something better than the browser/DOM/JavaScript and the proprietary offerings from Adobe, Microsoft, and Sun.
These are two important problems that I am studying. What hard problems are you working on?
Disks will no longer be the performance bottleneck of cutting edge systems. Instead it will be network latency. I think that a very important problem will be the geographic distribution of information to minimize latency for users and maintaining consistency of those replicas.
Additionally, the current model of software installation will become obsolete. A very important current problem is how to deliver applications over the network with good performance and stability. I think that we need something better than the browser/DOM/JavaScript and the proprietary offerings from Adobe, Microsoft, and Sun.
These are two important problems that I am studying. What hard problems are you working on?
In fact, you can use any fab to make these things right now
Whoa. I didn't expect to hear that.
Whoa. I didn't expect to hear that.
Researchers believe the discovery will pave the way for instant-on PCs, more energy-efficient computers, and new analog computers that can process and associate information in a manner similar to that of the human brain.
It will also bring about world peace and time travel.
It will also bring about world peace and time travel.
Here's hoping! ;P
Some more details here: http://eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=...
Author is clueless: "changes in voltage, or flux" - in this case flux is not change in voltage, but magnetic field.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux
"Flux is usually the integral of a vector quantity over a finite surface."
So, I don't think the author is clueless. The vector quantity in this case is the electric field.
Edit: although, from reading a little bit more about the Memristor, it appears that it actually relates the magnetic flux to the charge.
"Flux is usually the integral of a vector quantity over a finite surface."
So, I don't think the author is clueless. The vector quantity in this case is the electric field.
Edit: although, from reading a little bit more about the Memristor, it appears that it actually relates the magnetic flux to the charge.
d(phi) = Mdq
Reply to the edit: I'm reading through the paper now, and the magnetic properties appear to be irrelevant. The "flux" being discussed is related to the flow of current.
I'll post something more detailed when I finish the paper.
I'll post something more detailed when I finish the paper.
The original paper by Chua: http://www.scribd.com/doc/2753819/MemristorThe-Missing-Circu...
I don't know enough about electronics to know how sensationalist this article is being.
does it really have all the implications that are mentioned in the article? (analog computing, AI)
does it really have all the implications that are mentioned in the article? (analog computing, AI)
Somewhat justified - it allows nano-scale analog processing elements and storage. More details here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor
Woah. Positive correlation between how excited people are by a piece of science news and how much they know about the topic. How often does that happen?
For the record: It just occured to me that, with memristors, we would be able to implement large parts of the computational characters of the future directly in hardware. Which would really be swell.
I wonder how many bits will ultimately fit in a single memristor. It seems like this has the ability to increase storage capacity by several orders of magnitude.
Are there opportunities for startups designing memristor based circuits?
Are there any patents on memristors?
Are there any patents on memristors?
the paper was published in the 1970s but the device itself has been fabricate in Hp labs so there is a very good chance that they got a provisional patent on this. They are probably working on a full patent at this time.
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This will be big someday, but I fear that the huge inertia that is the software and hardware industry (well, at least the larger companies) will keep this out of mainstream for 5-8 years.
Mommy, I can't wait 5-8 years for this utterly game changing technology... I want it NOW! I want it nowWwWWwwWw!!!
Whee! Yet another Wave of the Future!
Hmm. Quantum computers or memresistor-based computers. What to choose? Maybe both, if someone can figure out a way to convert reliably between spin superpositions and resistance.
WTF is all of this going to do to teh intarwobs?
Hmm. Quantum computers or memresistor-based computers. What to choose? Maybe both, if someone can figure out a way to convert reliably between spin superpositions and resistance.
WTF is all of this going to do to teh intarwobs?
Slashdot comments are decent.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?threshold=3&mod...
Here is the Nature paper: http://www.scribd.com/doc/2764516/nature06932