5 ms·

Are memristors real? I feel like I've been hearing about how memristors are going to revolutionize computing for as long as I've been paying attention (~10 year

Are memristors real? I feel like I've been hearing about how memristors are going to revolutionize computing for as long as I've been paying attention (~10 years). And yet, they never arrive. I also recall some detractors who say it's all marketing and "true" memristors aren't going to be viable for a super long time. Can anyone from HN summarize what the deal with memristors is?

Rhinobird 7y ago
You can buy the here: https://knowm.org/product/ https://knowm.org/product/
- throwawaycert 7y ago
  This looks like a snake oil salesman rebranded CBRAM as a memristor and hoped nobody qualified would notice that they're claiming a revolutionary breakthrough.
  - ac29 7y ago
    They explicitly say that isn't the case: " SDC memristors are distinct from (and superior to) Conductive Bridge RAM (CBRAM) technology and represent their own class of memristor." https://knowm.org/downloads/Knowm_Memristors.pdf https://knowm.org/downloads/Knowm_Memristors.pdf
    - throwawaycert 7y ago
      No, they make a claim and their only sources are their own work that doesn’t appear to have been peer reviewed or even vouched for by anyone that doesn’t work for them. A true memristor as envisioned by Chua would be a revolutionary device of extreme utility. If knownm has what they say they have, the company would be worth billions. But they’ve been around for years and their website looks like every other scammy snake oil site out there. Hah, I just noticed, the founder and the CTO have no industry experience and I can’t find anyone who does connected to the company. They started this scam fresh out of college. And more: Their "angel investor" and "chief administrative officer" is the founder's mother, but this is very carefully sidestepped in the bios. Every time I look closer, it's one more classic sign of a scam. Who are their process engineers? Where is their fab? Are they contracting with a third party? Who? Will they vouch for the technology? Ahahahaha, as it were: "In January of 2018 AHaH Computing was proven feasible with Knowm SDC Memristors on the open-source Memristor Discovery platform. As of January 2019, Knowm SDC Memristors passed four years of shelf-life testing and have shipped to researcher in over forty countries." The "Memristor Discovery Platform" was made by... Knowm. (in other words, "it works because I say so"). Are you sure this isn't a practical joke? We've been here before. Companies make all sorts of microchips that do a lot, a little, or nothing at all, and many are counterfeit and outright frauds. When a small company in New Mexico with no experience tells you they're going to revolutionize computing, just walk away.
      - MegaButts 7y ago
        While I think you make a lot of good points, I just want to point out a fun fact. > When a small company in New Mexico with no experience tells you they're going to revolutionize computing, just walk away. This is a perfect description for Microsoft in 1975, which was founded in New Mexico.
        throwawaycert 7y ago
        I know. :) It's fun in two ways, in fact. In one way, I could say "See? New Mexican companies are all criminals!", but in the other, I can point out that Microsoft, while scrappy, was basically trying to sell something they knew they could build - and everyone else more or less did, too. They made something important, and evolutionary, but not revolutionary. Any company that says "The revolution is here!" is suspect, but if they can't actually give you a device that brings major, practical, commercially important changes, it's probably bullshit.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        mikekchar 7y ago
        To be fair, MS did not revolutionize computing when it was founded. They didn't make anything that everyone else wasn't already making. I'm trying to think of a single thing that they did before the company was worth a billion dollars that was in any way revolutionary, technically. I can't think of a single thing (lots of stuff since then, BTW, but I think that's a bit unfair ;-) ). They executed well, both in development and in business and they had a good combination of good business foresight and lucky breaks. They were also pretty ruthless.
        spc476 7y ago
        They sold software. Before Microsoft, there wasn't much (if any) of a market for just software, independent of the hardware.
      - 7y ago
aperrien 7y ago
You can make memristors at home by joining together two dissimilar oxidized metal surfaces. Some details on a DIY project given here: http://sparkbangbuzz.com/memristor/memristor.htm http://sparkbangbuzz.com/memristor/memristor.htm
p1esk 7y ago
I work on memristor based crossbars for neural network computation. Memristors are real, but we’re pretty far away from mass scale commercial products.
- touristtam 7y ago
  Any recent article recommendation? :)
  - p1esk 7y ago
    https://www.ece.ucsb.edu/~strukov/papers/2018/natcommMLP2018.pdf https://www.ece.ucsb.edu/~strukov/papers/2018/natcommMLP2018...

Rhinobird 7y ago

You can buy the here: https://knowm.org/product/ https://knowm.org/product/

throwawaycert 7y ago
This looks like a snake oil salesman rebranded CBRAM as a memristor and hoped nobody qualified would notice that they're claiming a revolutionary breakthrough.
- ac29 7y ago
  They explicitly say that isn't the case: " SDC memristors are distinct from (and superior to) Conductive Bridge RAM (CBRAM) technology and represent their own class of memristor." https://knowm.org/downloads/Knowm_Memristors.pdf https://knowm.org/downloads/Knowm_Memristors.pdf
  - throwawaycert 7y ago
    No, they make a claim and their only sources are their own work that doesn’t appear to have been peer reviewed or even vouched for by anyone that doesn’t work for them. A true memristor as envisioned by Chua would be a revolutionary device of extreme utility. If knownm has what they say they have, the company would be worth billions. But they’ve been around for years and their website looks like every other scammy snake oil site out there. Hah, I just noticed, the founder and the CTO have no industry experience and I can’t find anyone who does connected to the company. They started this scam fresh out of college. And more: Their "angel investor" and "chief administrative officer" is the founder's mother, but this is very carefully sidestepped in the bios. Every time I look closer, it's one more classic sign of a scam. Who are their process engineers? Where is their fab? Are they contracting with a third party? Who? Will they vouch for the technology? Ahahahaha, as it were: "In January of 2018 AHaH Computing was proven feasible with Knowm SDC Memristors on the open-source Memristor Discovery platform. As of January 2019, Knowm SDC Memristors passed four years of shelf-life testing and have shipped to researcher in over forty countries." The "Memristor Discovery Platform" was made by... Knowm. (in other words, "it works because I say so"). Are you sure this isn't a practical joke? We've been here before. Companies make all sorts of microchips that do a lot, a little, or nothing at all, and many are counterfeit and outright frauds. When a small company in New Mexico with no experience tells you they're going to revolutionize computing, just walk away.
    - MegaButts 7y ago
      While I think you make a lot of good points, I just want to point out a fun fact. > When a small company in New Mexico with no experience tells you they're going to revolutionize computing, just walk away. This is a perfect description for Microsoft in 1975, which was founded in New Mexico.
      - throwawaycert 7y ago
        I know. :) It's fun in two ways, in fact. In one way, I could say "See? New Mexican companies are all criminals!", but in the other, I can point out that Microsoft, while scrappy, was basically trying to sell something they knew they could build - and everyone else more or less did, too. They made something important, and evolutionary, but not revolutionary. Any company that says "The revolution is here!" is suspect, but if they can't actually give you a device that brings major, practical, commercially important changes, it's probably bullshit.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - mikekchar 7y ago
        To be fair, MS did not revolutionize computing when it was founded. They didn't make anything that everyone else wasn't already making. I'm trying to think of a single thing that they did before the company was worth a billion dollars that was in any way revolutionary, technically. I can't think of a single thing (lots of stuff since then, BTW, but I think that's a bit unfair ;-) ). They executed well, both in development and in business and they had a good combination of good business foresight and lucky breaks. They were also pretty ruthless.
        spc476 7y ago
        They sold software. Before Microsoft, there wasn't much (if any) of a market for just software, independent of the hardware.
    - 7y ago

aperrien 7y ago

You can make memristors at home by joining together two dissimilar oxidized metal surfaces. Some details on a DIY project given here: http://sparkbangbuzz.com/memristor/memristor.htm http://sparkbangbuzz.com/memristor/memristor.htm

p1esk 7y ago

I work on memristor based crossbars for neural network computation. Memristors are real, but we’re pretty far away from mass scale commercial products.

touristtam 7y ago
Any recent article recommendation? :)
- p1esk 7y ago
  https://www.ece.ucsb.edu/~strukov/papers/2018/natcommMLP2018.pdf https://www.ece.ucsb.edu/~strukov/papers/2018/natcommMLP2018...