Watched the video, read the article, but I'm not entirely clear how 'in memory' components differ in principle from just having a CPU with very large register sets?
IBM scientists say radical new ‘in-memory’ architecture will speed up computers
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Re: IBM scientists say radical new ‘in-memory’ architecture will speed up computers
#32This is the promise of memristors. Despite innumerable articles being written about neuromorphic architectures like they'll be something miraculous, this ability to change from functioning as a bit of memory to being a bunch of functional logic on the fly at the speed of a memory read? That's going to be crazy. It will open up possibilities that we probably can't even imagine right now. I've never understood why peop…
Transistors provide something that resistors, capacitors, inductors and memristors don't, and thus they can't be replaced. That thing is gain, ie, amplification (of either voltage or current). All the others are lossy, so if you imagine some building block, then cascade N of them in a row, eventually the signal will become too weak (at some N) to be useful.
Re: IBM scientists say radical new ‘in-memory’ architecture will speed up computers
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well with most claims that generalize computing power, such as the title of this, it's mostly aimed at something more specialized. "The researchers believe this new prototype technology will enable ultra-dense, low-power, and massively parallel computing systems that are especially useful for AI applications." So it seems that would benefit AI/Machine Learning more than GP processing, from that statement.
I'm not so sure. CPUs are stupidly fast, now - the bottleneck is virtually always the time it takes to move data in and out of memory. What if, instead of trying to bring the data to the calculation, you brought the calculation to the data? You could speed up everything . Fun to think about: in this scenario, the main job of an "optimizing compiler" would be to organize things spatially so that, as a calculation move…
This idea has come around many times, all the way back to the ILLIAC IV, Thinking Machines, and the NCube. The only commercial success is GPUs, which really do have elements with both compute and memory crunching away in parallel. Other pure-crunch appilcations have been found for GPUs and things like them. There are now GPU-like compute units for servers, although in many cases they're still GPUs, with frame buffers and video hardware that will never generate an image.
Re: IBM scientists say radical new ‘in-memory’ architecture will speed up computers
#34This is the promise of memristors. Despite innumerable articles being written about neuromorphic architectures like they'll be something miraculous, this ability to change from functioning as a bit of memory to being a bunch of functional logic on the fly at the speed of a memory read? That's going to be crazy. It will open up possibilities that we probably can't even imagine right now. I've never understood why peop…
Transistors provide something that resistors, capacitors, inductors and memristors don't, and thus they can't be replaced. That thing is gain, ie, amplification (of either voltage or current). All the others are lossy, so if you imagine some building block, then cascade N of them in a row, eventually the signal will become too weak (at some N) to be useful.
Do you remember when IBM sold off their hard drive research division?
I was convinced this meant they knew memristors were going to kill hard drives soon and they were profit taking before killing them off.
That’s been more than ten years now. I am still waiting, but made other plans.
Re: IBM scientists say radical new ‘in-memory’ architecture will speed up computers
#35This is the promise of memristors. Despite innumerable articles being written about neuromorphic architectures like they'll be something miraculous, this ability to change from functioning as a bit of memory to being a bunch of functional logic on the fly at the speed of a memory read? That's going to be crazy. It will open up possibilities that we probably can't even imagine right now. I've never understood why peop…
> I'm still waiting to be able to buy a 2000 ppi display like IBM's R&D announced creating back in the late 1990s or so... You're not thinking of this and mistakenly adding an extra 0, are you? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors#His...
They were right. Retina displays aren’t even the high PPI ones anymore. They are the equivalent of second generation laser printers.
Re: IBM scientists say radical new ‘in-memory’ architecture will speed up computers
#36This is the promise of memristors. Despite innumerable articles being written about neuromorphic architectures like they'll be something miraculous, this ability to change from functioning as a bit of memory to being a bunch of functional logic on the fly at the speed of a memory read? That's going to be crazy. It will open up possibilities that we probably can't even imagine right now. I've never understood why peop…
> I've never understood why people don't get more excited about memristors. personally, mostly because i've been seeing articles about how they're just about to totally upend computing for the last ten years
Pretty sure I first read about them in a PC World magazine I got at the airport on a family vacation in like 2003
Re: IBM scientists say radical new ‘in-memory’ architecture will speed up computers
#37This is the promise of memristors. Despite innumerable articles being written about neuromorphic architectures like they'll be something miraculous, this ability to change from functioning as a bit of memory to being a bunch of functional logic on the fly at the speed of a memory read? That's going to be crazy. It will open up possibilities that we probably can't even imagine right now. I've never understood why peop…
this ability to change from functioning as a bit of memory to being a bunch of functional logic on the fly at the speed of a memory read? That's going to be crazy. It will open up possibilities that we probably can't even imagine right now.
There might be clever ways to make a particular circuit dual purpose or something (Storage element that can do math on itself? A math pipeline that doesn't need pipeline flops?)
But arbitrary reprogrammability is already here. It's called an FPGA, and it sees only niche use, not in the least because developing a bitstream to program it with is a huge chunk of work. So the days of a chip that constantly morphs like a chameleon to unrecognizable new forms is probably a long way in the future.
I like to remind myself the industry is called VLSI- very large scale integration. In other words, the job is not about transistors. More than anything else, it's about managing the complexity of billions of transistors. Digital CMOS is a great example; transistors can already do so much more than CMOS, but it's a massively simplifying design scheme.
Re: IBM scientists say radical new ‘in-memory’ architecture will speed up computers
#38This is the promise of memristors. Despite innumerable articles being written about neuromorphic architectures like they'll be something miraculous, this ability to change from functioning as a bit of memory to being a bunch of functional logic on the fly at the speed of a memory read? That's going to be crazy. It will open up possibilities that we probably can't even imagine right now. I've never understood why peop…
The best thing about memristors is that actually this is how the brain really works (at an electronical equivalence). There is no von Neumann architecture in our cortex, rather neurons in networks which both compute and store memories.
Neurons are routers that apply weights to their inputs.
Re: IBM scientists say radical new ‘in-memory’ architecture will speed up computers
#39This is the promise of memristors. Despite innumerable articles being written about neuromorphic architectures like they'll be something miraculous, this ability to change from functioning as a bit of memory to being a bunch of functional logic on the fly at the speed of a memory read? That's going to be crazy. It will open up possibilities that we probably can't even imagine right now. I've never understood why peop…
I can't talk for other people, but I personally don't try to get over-excited over anything unless I see a working proof of concept where the advantages are clear. It's kinda unfortunate, because there's great work being done in research that I should probably feel much more excited about, but I'm continuously bombarded with new discoveries that I never hear about again.
I personally don't try to get over-excited over anything unless I see a working proof of concept where the advantages are clear.
Those are the two things you need to look for. No proof of concept? Well, talk is cheap! Have a proof of concept, but the advantages aren't clear? Again, talk is cheap. Refine it until the advantages are demonstrable!
Re: IBM scientists say radical new ‘in-memory’ architecture will speed up computers
#40This is the promise of memristors. Despite innumerable articles being written about neuromorphic architectures like they'll be something miraculous, this ability to change from functioning as a bit of memory to being a bunch of functional logic on the fly at the speed of a memory read? That's going to be crazy. It will open up possibilities that we probably can't even imagine right now. I've never understood why peop…
Maybe for the same reason as people don't get more excited about quantum computers -- they can replace basically everything as well, yet we don't see them around.
Quantum computers require both very specific configuration for each problem, and cryogenic cooling. Both of those issues mean there's no reason to suspect they will find more than use as a daughtercard any time soon. Memristors, on the other hand, could replace CPUs, RAM, SSDs, bulk storage, FPGAs with one consistent lattice, a totally unified memory architecture, and an economy of scale that I don't believe has ever existed before.
And that's BEFORE you do any of the exotic research of moving the computing elements around during operation. Just imagine if there was no memory hierarchy, where accessing a byte in mass storage is as fast and as easy as accessing a register. Quantum computers can't replace commodity hardware and there's no reason to think they will. Memristors, on the other hand, are one of the fundamental circuit elements and are destined to become as widespread as resistors, capacitors, and transistors.