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Well, perhaps the storage may be better but I can't see how memristors will change the CPU heat equation. Why will memristors actually require less power to do

Well, perhaps the storage may be better but I can't see how memristors will change the CPU heat equation. Why will memristors actually require less power to do the equivalent of what conventional CMOS transistors do? They both seem to require power to effect changes of state. Can anyone explain what it is about memristors that allow them to use much less power to operate at the same speed as CMOS? Also the wiki page itself says Although the HP memristor is a major discovery for electrical engineering theory, it has yet to be demonstrated in operation at practical speeds and densities. Graphs in Williams' original report show switching operation at only ~1 Hz. Although the small dimension of the device seem to imply fast operation, the charge carriers move very slowly Woah. 1Hz is once per second, or twelve orders of magnitude slower than current CPU speeds, so unless we're talking about some radical alternative to Von Neumann I wouldn't expect them to be viable for CPUs for a few decades. Caveat: I have only a minimal understanding of hardware and semiconductor physics.

Retric 18y ago
As transistors get smaller they use less power per cycle. So a going from a 34.8W, 7.5million transistor PII @233 MHz to a 500million transistor Core 2 Duo at 2400 MHz uses a lot less than 34.8W(500 * 2400) / (7.5*233) = 23,896W or 23KW. Note: Q6600(Core 2 Quad)@2.40 GHz uses 95 W but a lot of that is L2 cash which is less power hungry than it's computational units. PS: If you want portable power today a U1400 Intel Core Solo @1.20 GHz uses 5.5 W of power and will crush a PII in the same way I expect a new 5.5W CPU to crush a Core 2 Duo in 10 years.
- bayareaguy 18y ago
  That all makes sense since a PII and a Duo use the same kind of transistors. I was more curious about what the effect on power would be when memristors augment or replace transistors on a CPU.

Retric 18y ago

As transistors get smaller they use less power per cycle. So a going from a 34.8W, 7.5million transistor PII @233 MHz to a 500million transistor Core 2 Duo at 2400 MHz uses a lot less than 34.8W(500 * 2400) / (7.5*233) = 23,896W or 23KW. Note: Q6600(Core 2 Quad)@2.40 GHz uses 95 W but a lot of that is L2 cash which is less power hungry than it's computational units. PS: If you want portable power today a U1400 Intel Core Solo @1.20 GHz uses 5.5 W of power and will crush a PII in the same way I expect a new 5.5W CPU to crush a Core 2 Duo in 10 years.

bayareaguy 18y ago
That all makes sense since a PII and a Duo use the same kind of transistors. I was more curious about what the effect on power would be when memristors augment or replace transistors on a CPU.