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HP Memristors Will Reinvent Computer Memory "by 2014"

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

#51

Post by watmough »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #44
freehunter wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Quality 32 GB flash drives are $20 on Amazon.

mRAM is going to have to work hard to keep up.

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

#52

Post by nl »

ricardobeat wrote: post #43
mattdeboard wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why not spend those enormous amounts in actually producing and shipping it before anyone else does?

Because you might be able to make more money with a slow introduction rather than a fast one. Restricting supply means you don't cannibalize the existing flash memory market, and can probably still make huge profits from people who must have the best possible performance.

Also, over-investment in production facilities is a huge risk.

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

#53

Post by gruseom »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #49
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 hardwar…

It's an exhilarating vision, because it would get a whole lot of accidental limitations out of our way and allow us to build the essence of a design. A lot of complexity is due to the impedance mismatch between what goes on at the lowest level vs. the highest. To be able to design the machine itself as part of the system would be a huge breakthrough – the sort of thing that, if it happens, people may look back and wonder how anybody did anything before.

I get excited thinking about it. Unfortunately, we still don't have any evidence that it's real. Read carefully, the article rather suggests the opposite.

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

#54

Post by gruseom »

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.

Naturally they're doing enormous amounts of market research.

Does this pass a sanity test? What they're talking about would be the biggest breakthrough in computing in a generation. The question is not whether there's a market for it. The question is whether it works.

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

#55

Post by gruseom »

JackC wrote: post #18
freehunter wrote: post #8

So then memristors remain "in the future". sigh . I was naiive enough to believe them a year ago when they said "it'll be on the market in 18 months". I was really looking forward to that being true and ditching RAM in six months.

Don't worry, it's still true. They'll be on the market in 18 months. :)

Heh. That's like the old joke about how "functional programming is the future of programming: always has been, always will be".

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

#56

Post by ChuckMcM »

ThomPete wrote: post #42
ChuckMcM wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It always feels like progress is accelerating but it is remarkably stubborn.

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

#57

Post by Tuna-Fish »

tluyben2 wrote: post #25
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not talking about magic; that's why I would like to see some (even expensive) developer version (as this is how new tech these days usually starts right?) come from HP. HP has the millions I would imagine and they know/see the potential (even though a lot of investment needs to go in to harvest that potential).

What exactly do you want?

I really have no idea what you even mean with a "developer version". Memristors are just circuit elements. They are laid out in the billions on a wafer and connected together with copper interconnects -- just like normal transistors or the floating gate ones used by flash. They could give devs early memory devices or something that uses memristors for logic, but other than having the word memristor on the top, they would not differ from similar devices built out of transistors and silicon.

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

#58

Post by tluyben2 »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #57
tluyben2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about magic; that's why I would like to see some (even expensive) developer version (as this is how new tech these days usually starts right?) come from HP. HP has the millions I would imagine and they know/see the potential (even though a lot of investment needs to go in to harvest that potential).

What exactly do you want? I really have no idea what you even mean with a "developer version". Memristors are just circuit elements. They are laid out in the billions on a wafer and connected together with copper interconnects -- just like normal transistors or the floating gate ones used by flash. They could give devs early memory devices or something that uses memristors for logic, but other than having the word me…

Well, the interview with the scientist from HP clearly states software would have to written very differently to make full use of this technology. So I want to see how that works. You seem to know a lot more about it, so what am I missing?
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