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With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer

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Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer

#261

Post by ChuckMcM »

jacquesm wrote: post #219
mindslight wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it must somehow follow that parasitic mem-resistance must have been with us all along I'm not so sure about that. It's impossible to make things without unwanted series/parallel resistances because conductors/insulators aren't perfect. It's impossible to make things without parasitic capacitance because without a perfect insulator, any two points have some capacitance between them - just like how there's also a par…

The big problem is that your two terminal battery powered op-amp circuit would (1) sooner or later run out of battery power and (2) would have to exhibit it's memory function through some 'ordinary' memory device. If we're going to use 'ordinary' memory devices anyway then the whole exercise is moot. What exactly drives 'M' is the billion dollar (and probably many billions of dollars) question... It's more like the c…

memristors, like core memory, are destructively read. You measure the current to set them to 1 capturing the ones where you needed more current (they were zero initially) and the ones that needed less current (they were one initially). You capture the state in a register, and in the second half of the cycle you write the zeros back where the register shows the were originally zero.

As core memory before it showed, you can do this with sufficient accuracy if the hysteresis difference is large enough. The only requirement is that it take a different amount of current to set it to a known state if it was already in that state, than it does to set it to the same known state when it was in the opposite state.

Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer

#262

Post by oakwhiz »

jacquesm wrote: post #145
jawns wrote: post #33

For those of you who are unfamiliar with what a memristor is, as I was, HP has an easy-to-understand analogy on its FAQ page about memristors: "A common analogy for a resistor is a pipe that carries water. The water itself is analogous to electrical charge, the pressure at the input of the pipe is similar to voltage, and the rate of flow of the water through the pipe is like electrical current. Just as with an electr…

Interesting tidbit: a while ago, I was talking about memristors with a physics trained person. And he told me something that really stuck: It is impossible to make an inductor (coil) without resistance and without capacitance. It is impossible to make a capacitor without some inductance and a little bit of leakage. It is impossible to create a resistor that does not have self-inductance or a bit of capacitance. If yo…

I remember seeing a video [1] where a man discovered that old, corroded brass ammunition casings developed a slight memristance property.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlswP_qXbdA

Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer

#263

Post by haberman »

ohitsdom wrote: post #249
haberman wrote: post #193

> “If you want to really rethink computing architecture, we’re the only game in town now,” he said. Another way of putting this: because of patents, we're in a privileged position of being the only people who are allowed to work on this problem. So instead of the whole world rushing to make something interesting with this new tech, we get a group of people working in an ivory tower trying to come up with the perfect…

I don't think it's a patent issue so much as a question of resources. Sure, Google, Apple, Microsoft and others have the resources to develop a similar machine, but a new type of computer would wipe out their business model in a much more devastating manner than HP. HP has the resources, but also isn't enjoying too much success to scare away this risk.

You don't think the fact that HP has a bunch of patents around this sort of disincentives others?

Also I'm not seeing how radically denser/faster storage is going to make search engine or consumer device business models tank.

Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer

#264

Post by lpmay »

mindslight wrote: post #215
jacquesm wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting tidbit: a while ago, I was talking about memristors with a physics trained person. And he told me something that really stuck: It is impossible to make an inductor (coil) without resistance and without capacitance. It is impossible to make a capacitor without some inductance and a little bit of leakage. It is impossible to create a resistor that does not have self-inductance or a bit of capacitance. If yo…

> it must somehow follow that parasitic mem-resistance must have been with us all along I'm not so sure about that. It's impossible to make things without unwanted series/parallel resistances because conductors/insulators aren't perfect. It's impossible to make things without parasitic capacitance because without a perfect insulator, any two points have some capacitance between them - just like how there's also a par…

>It's impossible to make things without parasitic capacitance because without a perfect insulator...

Maybe a nit, but I don't believe that is technically correct. Parasitic capacitance (and inductance) exist between any two objects because the electric (and magnetic) field extend from a charge (or current) to infinity. These fields store energy, even in perfect vacuum. The lumped circuit model of stored electric energy is capacitance, the model of stored magnetic energy is inductance so anything physical which carries charge or current will have capacitance or inductance (will store finite energy). An insulating material (dielectric) in a capacitor can increase the energy storage (by the sqrt of the dielectric constant of the material) but non-ideal materials are not necessary for the "parasitic" effect to occur.

Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer

#265

Post by Tloewald »

ohitsdom wrote: post #249
haberman wrote: post #193

> “If you want to really rethink computing architecture, we’re the only game in town now,” he said. Another way of putting this: because of patents, we're in a privileged position of being the only people who are allowed to work on this problem. So instead of the whole world rushing to make something interesting with this new tech, we get a group of people working in an ivory tower trying to come up with the perfect…

I don't think it's a patent issue so much as a question of resources. Sure, Google, Apple, Microsoft and others have the resources to develop a similar machine, but a new type of computer would wipe out their business model in a much more devastating manner than HP. HP has the resources, but also isn't enjoying too much success to scare away this risk.

If HP invents an insanely superior computer it will still need software, and HP hasn't lit the world on fire with its software. The real victim would be Intel/ARM.

It's not like Linux / Mac OS X / Windows won't run on a computer with a huge amount of RAM and no "hard disk". Most users won't care if a 100x faster computer runs their existing stuff only 10x faster.

Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer

#268

Post by sushirain »

The biggest difference the memristor brings is to Machine Learning. The memristor is a first step towards a hardware implementation of Hebb's rule - "neurons that fire together wire together". Hebb's rule variants are used in machine learning algorithms to do things like web-search, image/object recognition, etc. (Specifically, Hebb's rule can be used to compute PCA.)

It's interesting to note that the brain does not have separate components for memory and computation. Every neuron computes and stores at the same time.

Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer

#269

Post by mjcohen »

magicalist wrote: post #168
scott_karana wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It did disappear. And fortunately, they've added it back again, in yet another UX interaction. https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3273567?hl=en

that's the interaction groby_b just described

However "You can move and zoom in or out on your saved map, but you can’t search or get directions on it."

Reduced the utility considerably imho.

Both Navigon and Co-Pilot (on Android) can store the entire U.S. in about 1.5 GB.

Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer

#270

Post by darkmighty »

lpmay wrote: post #264
mindslight wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it must somehow follow that parasitic mem-resistance must have been with us all along I'm not so sure about that. It's impossible to make things without unwanted series/parallel resistances because conductors/insulators aren't perfect. It's impossible to make things without parasitic capacitance because without a perfect insulator, any two points have some capacitance between them - just like how there's also a par…

>It's impossible to make things without parasitic capacitance because without a perfect insulator... Maybe a nit, but I don't believe that is technically correct. Parasitic capacitance (and inductance) exist between any two objects because the electric (and magnetic) field extend from a charge (or current) to infinity. These fields store energy, even in perfect vacuum. The lumped circuit model of stored electric ener…

Any signal that has some non-zero propagation time also needs proportionally high capacitances/inductances because of the energy storage requirement you mentioned (resistors are memoryless so can't model that).
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