"HP’s bet is the memristor, a nanoscale chip that Labs researchers must build and handle in full anticontamination clean-room suits." So... it's a chip.
Is it web scale? Can we make it social?
Obviously; it's been designed upfront to be SOLOMO.
With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer
81–90 of 299 posts
Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer
#82Dr. Leon Ong Chua [1] wrote this paper [2] in 1971 entitled, Memristor - The Missing Circuit Element, where he first outlined the theory of the memristor.
Admittedly, this is not my field, so my fascination may appear to be quite naive to the well-initiated, but I find it simply intriguing that the memristor was first theorized to exist; that is, it is somewhat analogous to the Higgs boson, in that the mathematics precedes the discovery.
To my point (from the paper):
"Although no physical memristor has yet been discovered in the form of a physical device without internal power supply, the circuit-theoretic and quasi-static electromagnetic analyses presented in Sections III and IV make plausible the notion that a memristor device with a monotonically increasing φ-q curve could be invented, if not discovered accidentally."
Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer
#83A memristor is the 4th fundamental circuit component, along with capacitors, resistors, and inductors. The important part of memristors is that they can be arranged to form a crossbar latch, which acts like a transistor. This crossbar latches are very very small, and very low power. HP plans on achieving data density of 100GB/cm^2 [1] with read write speeds approximately 100x faster then flash memory while using 1% o…
Not only that but it has the potential to change our entire model of computing, and simplify it tremendously. The unification of storage and computing.
Unification of storage and computing...what does that even mean? I get that having nearly unlimited, fast, persistent storage would be awesome, but that's not a conceptual merging of storage and computing -- but I definitely agree about the simplification.
Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, Google Maps allow you to cache portions of maps for offline use: https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/2650377?hl=en There are other navigation apps that do store offline maps; the reason they're not popular outside of outdoor enthusiasts is that they take up a huge amount of space. It seems like a reasonable trade-off to me.
Since when is caching a substitute for integration?
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by integration; are you proposing that the mapping app contain the complete map data, which is then occasionally updated as needed? There's a clear advantage to not storing several GB of data you rarely if ever need on a device with very limited storage space.
Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'll come down. Demand will be massive (if it lives up to the hype). This could potentially unify the RAM and Hard disks in computers.
There will always be a place for yet faster memory. Does this compete with the registers and L1/L2 cache in terms of speed?
But at least caches are often transparent to software, thus don't affect software as much.
Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer
#86Soooo... this is basically just persistent memory right? HP has been working on the memristor since 2008. Memristors have already been produced in labs by U of Michigan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor This article seeks to give the image that this is a novel idea that investors can take advantage of. In reality, it is not.
Actually, the cool bit about memristors is that you could treat them like both a transistor for computation or for memory, or flip. Like an fpga. So imagine the difference in an operating system that could retain its running image between reboots, and not have to distinguish things like stack/heap. And could reconfigure more computing resources on the fly and back again. It is... a very different view of computing. E…
So imagine the difference in an operating system that could retain its running image between reboots
What do you mean by this? This sounds like hibernation to me.
not have to distinguish things like stack/heap
I'm lost here too. This is a distinction that is made for purposes of program structure, not to kotow to demands of hardware.
Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not only that but it has the potential to change our entire model of computing, and simplify it tremendously. The unification of storage and computing.
Unification of storage and computing...what does that even mean? I get that having nearly unlimited, fast, persistent storage would be awesome, but that's not a conceptual merging of storage and computing -- but I definitely agree about the simplification.
Well only one pool of data, no more registers, cache, hard drives etc. The storage will live next to the logic. What's more, memristors can act was logic units as well as storage, and do it interchangeably.
Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer
#88Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer
#89"HP’s bet is the memristor, a nanoscale chip that Labs researchers must build and handle in full anticontamination clean-room suits." So... it's a chip.
See some of the other answers.
The memristor is not a chip, but the 4th fundamental electrical component; the chip is a hybrid memory/storage chip using memristors (instead of platters or capacitors). Because of its nature it demands a pretty thorough reimagining of processing data.
Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Software grows to match the hardware. You mean XML for instance?
Not sure why he was downvoted, xml is a trade off for developer convenience. A trade off we were willing to make because we had disposable bits.
What was the trade off? Harder to parse files for less human readability?