HP Scientists Design Resistor with Memory Properties
HP Scientists Design Resistor with Memory Properties
Posted 04/09/2010 at 6:30am
| by Paul Lilly
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For the past couple of years, a team of HP scientists have sat tucked away in a laboratory with the sole goal of pushing memristor research. What exactly is a memristor? Put simply, it's an electrical resistor with memory properties, and according to HP, memristors could push the speed of flash-based media tenfold or higher.
"This is sort of the missing element of the processor puzzle. It takes its place alongside the resistor, capacitor and inductor [as the fourth basic circuit element in chip engineering]. And it could change the way we do IT," said Stan Williams, HP senior fellow and Director of quantum Science Research.
Williams made those comments during the Flash Memory Summit in August 2009, and now less than a year later, Williams said they have discovered that the memristor "has more capabilities than we previously thought." No longer do Williams and Co. think memristors will just apply to storage devices, but they say "the memristor can perform logic, enabling computation to one day be performed in chips where data is stored, rather than on a specialized central processing unit."
If they're right, this could end up extending Moore's Law even after it's no longer possible to shrink transistors, Williams said.
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Scootiep
April 09, 2010 at 11:38am
Dude, if you're going to jump all the way to transporters, then don't lag behind with jet packs, jump to warp drive. Get with the times man!
To start press any key...ohh, where's the "Any" key. - Homer Simpson
violian
April 09, 2010 at 11:02am
Yes, I read about memristors a while back. Devices will also be significantly smaller because the memory can also reside with the CPU....or something like that. Currently, if you open up an iTouch for instance, half of the circuit board is taken up by memory.
JohnP
April 09, 2010 at 10:46am
Read about this 2 years ago in SciAm. Exact same picture even. Going to be at least a 10 year wait and a lot can happen in 10 years..
Neufeldt2002
April 09, 2010 at 8:35am
This is exciting news indeed. However, it all depends on what HP charges for said tech. I'm sure it won't be cheap.
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nduanetesh
April 09, 2010 at 8:28am
Holy Crap! I remember 10 years ago one of my computer science professors told us there was a theoretical fourth basic circuit called a "memristor", but no one had figured out how to make one. And now, here it is!
I'll be expecting transporter devices and jet packs next.
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