Missing Link of Electronics Discovered: "Memristor"

sciam.com ^ | May 1, 2008 | JR Minkel

[GOPJ]

Whether industry will adopt it remains to be seen.

It's better - it'll be adopted.

[thulldud]

Only way it wouldn’t be is if something even better comes right behind it.

[Uriah_lost]

JRF is reminding me of my Grandfather, who argued that the Church didn’t need a chandelier because it was a waste of money and besides, we didn’t have anybody that could play one.

[JRandomFreeper]

BWAHAHAHAHAHA! FOTFPMP! Snort, chuckle, giggle.

(Stern Face) Well, hell, son, can you play a chandelier? (I can, but I can't tell that story in mixed company)

I didn't mean to be a wet blanket, but just pointed out that inductive reactance, capacitive reactance, resistance, and switches have been de-reigure for lots of years, and survived tubes and transistors.

If someone has something new, bring it on. And prove it.

I honestly believe that this is an effect that doesn't actually warrant re-arranging my investment portfolio. And if it was, I would.

/johnny

[JRandomFreeper]

Sure, blast it with enough current, and it acts like a capacitor after the majik smoke is released. Resistors do well in that regard. Capacitor=2 conductors separated by a dielectic. Air works well.

Aluminum foil and wax paper works really well, unless the working voltage is too high.

:>)

/johnny

[JRandomFreeper]

BTW, I am QRP fan, and have built several 6-meter radios that fit in an Altoids box. It was all the rage, years ago. I did a mobile QSO, CW, using one of them.

QRP, antenna design, and narrow bandwidth stuff is the 'unexplored territory' for modern day radio operators.

73

/johnny

[AFreeBird]

Thanks. B4L8r

[Uriah_lost]

The level of discussion on this is pretty high (beyond my mortal ken)once you figure out who is serious and who is not. There are lots of poseurs there but its worth wading through it if you find this an interesting topic.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/30/211228

[AFPhys]

Thanks for the ping to this.

I am going to have to study this for a time. In addition to the concept, I am pretty skeptical about the process to make this industrially. I don’t mean to say I don’t think it can be done industrially, but that the road to practicality may be longer than anticipated. For certain, though, this industry has made so many unexpected strides so rapidly that it has often swept skepticism aside as easily as I sweep cobwebs away.

Memristor ... Years from now, I’ll have to say that I heard it here first.

[AFPhys]

BUY HP ...

Great observation!

[AFPhys]

It is a reprogrammable resistor, requiring just a brief flux of current to reprogram it.
-—<>-—<>-—<>-—<>-—<>-—

Possibly, more like a reprogrammable circuit array in practice. Choose which circuits you wish to “activate” right now. That could be “memory” or it could be logic circuits. This technology is likely to make current day PLA’s absolutely archaic, and open up nearly infinite possibility at the scale being discussed. Clock rates? Who needs a clock? I’m getting more excited about this the more I mull it over.

As Robert said earlier: Buy HP.

[AFPhys]

Thanks for linking this article. I hope it stays available for a long time. One of the most exciting comments made that I immediately said, YEAH to was, “This is Nobel Prize-worthy stuff we’re talking about.”

I think we’re likely to see that within FIVE years... this is really, really big.

In addition, someone spoke about “bring back analogue computers”... That could well be true, too. That could be HUGE in certain applications.

“After reading the few articles, wikipedia and the available information from HP, it looks more like a generational change in technology rather than just a new kind of memory. I think the Nature article’s wording of discovery is correct here, this looks like an interesting piece of base research with large real world applications, instead of a specific invention to store things.”

A second great observation here. I suspect applications of this will take a generation or two (of people, not technology) before the ultimate ramifications of this technology are close to understood.

[Uriah_lost]

I keep looking for someone named Noonian Singh or Lawrence Robertson associated with it

[ThePythonicCow]

this will take a generation or two (of people, not technology)

Agreed. I've worked with mechanical adding machines and slide rules (still own a wonderful K&E mahogany), punch cards and paper tape, vacuum tubes and core memory, TTL logic, GAS and CMOS, and now with some of the latest stuff that won't see the light of day for another year or two.

Devices with new useful properties, improved economics of production, and substantially smaller scale and lower power requirements can create long term disruptions in computer technology, and even associated markets and businesses.

Usually one is surprised at how little difference such devices make in the short term (the first few years) and how massively (and delightfully, for lifetime geeks like me) disruptive they are in the longer term.

Some individual people will make the transition to making good use of these fairly quickly. But groups of people, companies, divisions, business models, high volume factories and product markets take longer to transition. And the people who are on the leading edge of inventing really new ways of using these devices may come from rather unrelated backgrounds.

I wouldn't necessarily buy HP on this however, for three reasons.

1. The older I get, the shorter term and more conservative my investment strategy gets.
2. It may not be HP that profits greatly from this; they might be too stuck in their current markets, products and business models.
3. Whomever does profit greatly probably won't do so for a few years.

[AFPhys]

Oh, I agree completely with you.

This could take quite a while to implement, as I said, probably two generations, but this is absolutely going to win a Nobel Prize, and be as world changing as the transistor.

I witnessed the operation of an analogue computer back in the 60s. I don’t know whether they would for sure outstrip digital devices for anything we want to compute now, but if they could, this device will allow them to be built.

As I said, I think this will revolutionize Logic Grids we now use PLA’s for.

It will revolutionize “breadboarding” circuits

I can think of so many things so fast and I’m not even in this field (of electronics) ...

Saying “Memory devices” as the application is just so very short sighted about the application that it is almost criminal...

[DollyCali]

aha! a ping to one of these easy/basic/no - brain threads

/sarc

I REALLY admire you scientists! I was a biologist in another life & so do have a healthy respect for all of this even though it is a weeee litttttle bit elusive to me.

The closest I can come to understanding this is to think maybe the technology was used in Ironman?

Am I impressing you?

LOL.. forwarding to my dear nephew Jason, who is very bright & WILL understand this - right now however with the brief review, I must say I have NOT given the infor a chance to sink in..

[ThePythonicCow]

Saying “Memory devices” as the application is just so very short sighted

Yes - and thank-you very much for pointing that out.

[raygun]

IonImplantGuru hasn’t chmed in yet; the manufacturability of this item is wholly unknown.

[MortMan]

...creating the potential for systems that can be powered off and powered on again without the usual boot-up required of ordinary systems.

Then how does one reset the operating system? ;-P

(Yes, I'm sarcastically baiting my Windows!)

[CarrotAndStick]

By “resetting” the memristors to default value, I would guess :^)