MESSAGE
| DATE | 2008-05-03 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] More HP Memory advances: More human like memory
|
May 1, 2008 H.P. Reports Big Advance in Memory Chip Design By JOHN MARKOFF
Hewlett-Packard scientists reported Wednesday in the science journal
Nature that they have designed a simple circuit element that they believe
will make it possible to build tiny powerful computers that could imitate
biological functions.
The device, called a memristor, would be used to build extremely dense
computer memory chips that use far less power than today’s DRAM memory
chips. Manufacturers of today’s chips are rapidly reaching the limit
on how much smaller chips can be.
The memristor, an electrical resistor with memory properties, may
also make it possible to fashion advanced logic circuits, a class of
reprogrammable chips known as field programmable gate arrays, that are
widely used for rapid prototyping of new circuits and for custom-made
chips that need to be manufactured quickly.
Potentially even more tantalizing is the ability of the memristors to
store and retrieve a vast array of intermediate values, not just the
binary 1s and 0s conventional chips use. This allows them to function like
biological synapses and makes them ideal for many artificial intelligence
applications ranging from machine vision to understanding speech.
Independent researchers said that it seemed likely that the memristor
might relatively quickly be applied in computer memories, but that other
applications could be more challenging. Typically, technology advances
are not adopted unless they offer large advantages in cost or performance
over the technologies they are replacing.
“Whether it will be useful for other large-scale applications is
unclear at this point,†said Wolfgang Porod, director of the Center
for Nano Science and Technology at the University of Notre Dame.
The technology should be fairly quickly commercialized, said
R. Stanley Williams, director of the quantum science research group at
Hewlett-Packard. “This is on a fast track.â€
The memristor was predicted in 1971 by Leon Chua, an electrical engineer
at the University of California, Berkeley. There have been hints of an
unexplained behavior in the literature for some time, Mr. Chua said in
a phone interview on Tuesday.
He noted, however, that he had not worked on his idea for several
decades and that he was taken by surprise when he was contacted by the
Hewlett-Packard researchers several months ago. The advance clearly
points the way to a prediction made in 1959 by the physicist Richard
Feynman that “there’s plenty of room at the bottom,†referring to
the possibility of building atomic-scale systems.
“I can see all kinds of new technologies, and I’m thrilled,â€
he said.
The original theoretical work done by Mr. Chua was laid out in a paper,
“Memristor — The Missing Circuit Element.†The paper argued that
basic electronic theory required that in addition to the three basic
circuit elements — resistors, capacitors and inductors — a fourth
element should exist.
The Hewlett-Packard research team titled their paper, “The Missing
Memristor Found.â€
The Hewlett-Packard researchers said that the discovery of the memory
properties in tiny, extremely thin spots of titanium dioxide came from
a frustrating decade-long hunt for a new class of organic molecules to
serve as nano-sized switches. Researchers in both industry and academia
have hoped they would be able to fashion switches as small as the size of
a single molecule to someday replace transistors once the semiconductor
industry’s shrinking of electronic circuits made with photolithographic
techniques reached a technological limit.
The memristor is a radically different approach from another type of
solid state storage called phase-change memory that is being pursued
by I.B.M., Intel and other companies. In phase-change memory, heat is
used to shift a glassy material from an amorphous to a crystalline state
and back again. The switching speed of these systems is both slower and
requires more power, according to the Hewlett-Packard scientists.
The Hewlett-Packard team has successfully created working circuits
based on memristors that are as small as 15 nanometers (the diameter
of an atom is roughly about a tenth of a nanometer.) Ultimately, it
will be possible to make memristors as small as about four nanometers,
Mr. Williams said. In contrast the smallest components in today’s
semiconductors are 45 nanometers, and the industry currently does not
see a way to shrink those devices below about 20 nanometers.
Because the concept of a memristor was developed almost 40 years ago by
Mr. Chua, it is in the public domain. The Hewlett-Packard scientists,
however, have applied for patents covering their working version of
the device.
The most significant limitation that the Hewlett-Packard researchers
said the new technology faces is that the memristors function at about
one-tenth the speed of today’s DRAM memory cells. They can be made
in the same kinds of semiconductor factories that the chip industry now
uses, however.
-- http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Interesting Stuff http://www.nylxs.com -
Leadership Development in Free Software
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town that Brooklyn, like
Atlantis, reaches mythological proportions in the mind of the world -
RI Safir 1998
http://fairuse.nylxs.com DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS -
RI Safir 2002
"Yeah - I write Free Software...so SUE ME"
"The tremendous problem we face is that we are becoming sharecroppers
to our own cultural heritage -- we need the ability to participate in
our own society."
"> I'm an engineer. I choose the best tool for the job, politics be
damned.< You must be a stupid engineer then, because politcs and
technology have been attached at the hip since the 1st dynasty in
Ancient Egypt. I guess you missed that one."
© Copyright for the Digital Millennium
|
|
