HP Memristors Will Reinvent Computer Memory "by 2014" • Hacker News Board

Re: HP Memristors Will Reinvent Computer Memory "by 2014"

#41

Post by aortega » Thu, Jul 12, 2012, 4:04 AM UTC

tubbo wrote: post #38

pixie_ wrote: post #21

"There’s a lot more money being spent on understanding and modeling the market than on any of the research.” - what the shit

Memristors have "been around" in laboratory settings for a few years now. The research is done, now it's time to figure out how to market it. Seems pretty reasonable to me. This is actually very exciting to me, because the concept of a memristor, that of a large amount of small devices storing chunks of a larger piece of memory, is supposedly the same or a similar way that your brain's memory works.

The research is very far from done. Disclaimer: I'm not a physicist but at the lab the guy to my left is one and he's doing a PhD about memristors. I have an experimental device in front of me with wires coming out and stuff, it's based on some titanium alloy. They basically don't know why it works. They have some theories, like conductive ion micro channels forming in the material or something like that. They have two mathematical models of simulation, completely different of each other, and each one "works" under different set of conditions, but unlike transistors, flash memory and other components, the underlying effect that make most memristors work is currently unknown or theoretical. I was quite suprised because they don't tell you this in the news. I'm sure this small detail will not stop HP or Intel from selling it anyway.

Edit: "the concept of a memristor, that of a large amount of small devices storing chunks of a larger piece of memory" <-- this is not the concept of a memristor. Not even close.

Re: HP Memristors Will Reinvent Computer Memory "by 2014"

#42

Post by ThomPete » Thu, Jul 12, 2012, 4:12 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #7

sp332 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bubble memory was doing just fine until a Nobel-winning physics breakthrough allowed the existence of high-density hard drives. If memristors do as well as bubble memory, there will have to be a serious fluke for it not to replace everything on the market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_memory#Commercializatio...

Ah thanks for the memories (I was at Intel when they rolled up the bubble memory team). But if the Wikipedia page can be trusted, its a good example of the timeline of a disruptive technology. So 10 years from first devices to a chance to really disrupt everything. That would make 2018 the year to watch for memristor memory.

Unless progress is accelerating no?

Re: HP Memristors Will Reinvent Computer Memory "by 2014"

#43

Post by ricardobeat » Thu, Jul 12, 2012, 7:16 AM UTC

mattdeboard wrote: post #34

pixie_ wrote: post #21

"There’s a lot more money being spent on understanding and modeling the market than on any of the research.” - what the shit

I'm more surprised at how surprised so many people seem to be at this. This isn't a college student building a music-sharing app here. This is a huge corporation preparing to deliver disruptive technology. Naturally they're doing enormous amounts of market research.

But it doesn't make any sense. Why not spend those enormous amounts in actually producing and shipping it before anyone else does? Market research is sunk cost and doesn't prevent failure.

Re: HP Memristors Will Reinvent Computer Memory "by 2014"

#44

Post by MichaelApproved » Thu, Jul 12, 2012, 7:47 AM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #29

MichaelApproved wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it will still not be available for your PC to replace your RAM" RAM? I thought this was a replacement for HDD and SSDs.

You're right, I had my techs backwards. I thought they were targeting RAM first, then flash second. It's actually the other way around. Flash was supposed to be dead next year, DRAM in 2014, and SRAM in 2015 (or somewhere around there). http://www.dailytech.com/HP+to+Deploy+Memristor+Powered+SSD+...

Gotcha. I didn't even know they were targeting RAM at all. Can't wait until storage gets cheaper and faster. IO is the worst part of the cloud and this improvement could make working with a cloud computer much better.

Re: HP Memristors Will Reinvent Computer Memory "by 2014"

#45

Post by molmalo » Thu, Jul 12, 2012, 8:03 AM UTC

aortega wrote: post #41

tubbo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memristors have "been around" in laboratory settings for a few years now. The research is done, now it's time to figure out how to market it. Seems pretty reasonable to me. This is actually very exciting to me, because the concept of a memristor, that of a large amount of small devices storing chunks of a larger piece of memory, is supposedly the same or a similar way that your brain's memory works.

The research is very far from done. Disclaimer: I'm not a physicist but at the lab the guy to my left is one and he's doing a PhD about memristors. I have an experimental device in front of me with wires coming out and stuff, it's based on some titanium alloy. They basically don't know why it works. They have some theories, like conductive ion micro channels forming in the material or something like that. They have t…

Well, we have two models for light, and that doesn't stop us from using it :)

Hopefully it's something like this: If it works, let's sell it, then we can use some money to investigate how does it work and how we can improve it.

Re: HP Memristors Will Reinvent Computer Memory "by 2014"

#46

Post by gaius » Thu, Jul 12, 2012, 8:12 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #7

sp332 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bubble memory was doing just fine until a Nobel-winning physics breakthrough allowed the existence of high-density hard drives. If memristors do as well as bubble memory, there will have to be a serious fluke for it not to replace everything on the market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_memory#Commercializatio...

Ah thanks for the memories (I was at Intel when they rolled up the bubble memory team). But if the Wikipedia page can be trusted, its a good example of the timeline of a disruptive technology. So 10 years from first devices to a chance to really disrupt everything. That would make 2018 the year to watch for memristor memory.

Swings and roundabouts - Intel did much the same to promising processors, with their x86 juggernaut. With unlimited cash reserves, you can put lipstick on a pig.

Re: HP Memristors Will Reinvent Computer Memory "by 2014"

#47

Post by SiVal » Thu, Jul 12, 2012, 9:13 AM UTC

taliesinb wrote: post #32

Aficionados of weird co-incidence might be interested to learn that the researcher who discovered the memristor, Leon Chua, also has a daughter who is rather famous for having written "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Chua ). Leon Chua is also an enthusiast of Stephen Wolfram's NKS, and spoke at one of the early NKS conferences.

I read her book, which talks a lot about him, but I wouldn't have made the connection if you hadn't pointed it out. Thanks.

Re: HP Memristors Will Reinvent Computer Memory "by 2014"

#48

Post by adsr » Thu, Jul 12, 2012, 10:12 AM UTC

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #24

tluyben2 wrote: post #13

They should starting to bring out developer packages asap, because memory is not the only thing you can do with it as you can see from the presentations and papers. I find the stuff it can do BESIDES memory actually more interesting and really would like to get experimenting with it.

Even if the base circuit elements are made of memristors instead of transistors, the traces on top of them still need to be laid out in the traditional manner. So the fixed cost of bringing even a small memristor device to market is millions. Memristors are not some magic stuff that suddenly makes FPGAs as efficient as ASICs, nor do they make then dramatically cheaper.

Instead of real hardware, I wonder if a mock up virtual device acting as it's making use of memristors could work for experiments on how this could affect software.

Re: HP Memristors Will Reinvent Computer Memory "by 2014"

#49

Post by loup-vaillant » Thu, Jul 12, 2012, 10:24 AM UTC

kbd wrote: post #9

> Historically, electrical circuits were crafted with three basic building blocks: the capacitor, the resistor, and the inductor. But in 1971, University of California at Berkeley professor Leon Chua predicted the existence of a fourth: the memristor, short for memory resistor. > Then, in May of 2008, HP announced that it had actually built a memristor, thanks to HP Labs Fellow R. Stanley Williams and others working…

What I take from this presentation is much, much more than lots of memory. Apparently, these things can also do processing, like an FPGA. The result would be a whole system on a chip, only the design is almost entirely pushed up at the "software" level.

To me, that's even more game changing than a mere petabyte on a square inch. "Specialized" hardware is made easy. Complete re-purposing becomes possible. Most hardware compatibility issues just go away. And of course, it will be much, much easier to experiment with novel and totally crazy architectures.

Oh, and they say it can re-configure itself on the fly, very rapidly. So, it's not just easy innovations on hardware. It's metamorph hardware. Imagine for instance code that compiles down to logic gates, instead of very high level assembly code, possibly on the fly. Or, re-allocating hardware resources by the second, depending on your needs.

Re: HP Memristors Will Reinvent Computer Memory "by 2014"

#50

Post by ricardobeat » Thu, Jul 12, 2012, 10:48 AM UTC

mattdeboard wrote: post #34

pixie_ wrote: post #21

"There’s a lot more money being spent on understanding and modeling the market than on any of the research.” - what the shit

I'm more surprised at how surprised so many people seem to be at this. This isn't a college student building a music-sharing app here. This is a huge corporation preparing to deliver disruptive technology. Naturally they're doing enormous amounts of market research.

But it doesn't make any sense. Why not spend those enormous amounts in actually producing and shipping it before anyone else does? Market research is sunk cost and doesn't prevent failure.