3 ms·
Transistors provide something that resistors, capacitors, inductors and memristors don't, and thus they can't be replaced. That thing is gain, ie, amplificatio
by tasty_freeze 9y ago
Transistors provide something that resistors, capacitors, inductors and memristors don't, and thus they can't be replaced. That thing is gain, ie, amplification (of either voltage or current). All the others are lossy, so if you imagine some building block, then cascade N of them in a row, eventually the signal will become too weak (at some N) to be useful.
- hinkley 9y agoDo you remember when IBM sold off their hard drive research division? I was convinced this meant they knew memristors were going to kill hard drives soon and they were profit taking before killing them off. That’s been more than ten years now. I am still waiting, but made other plans.
- deelowe 9y agoIn all fairness, the hd industry as a whole has shrunk considerably since. Same for servers and PCs. I think they made the right decision, but I'm not sure I'd go as far as to say they had a good strategy for what they would do once they got rid of these product lines.
- Aloha 9y agoThey sold it when hard drives became a commodity item - generally commodity items don't get major R&D attached to them.
- manigandham 9y agoThere's still plenty of R&D being done with storage: https://www.anandtech.com/show/11925/western-digital-stuns-storage-industry-with-mamr-breakthrough-for-nextgen-hdds https://www.anandtech.com/show/11925/western-digital-stuns-s...