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I feel like memresistors have been hyped since HP tried to use it to save their business from 2007-2015. Nothing ever came from it from HP at least. Have there

I feel like memresistors have been hyped since HP tried to use it to save their business from 2007-2015. Nothing ever came from it from HP at least. Have there been new developments that make it more likely to be viable?

justinlloyd 4y ago
A lot of technology that's out at the fringes will often be hyped up by a marketing department. It is the culinary equivalent of telling everyone how awesome the soup is going to taste just as the cook is returning from the grocery store with the unprepared, raw ingredients. We're edging closer to the "needs seasoning." There's always some company trying to sell something that doesn't really exist in a production form, and then 10 years or 20 years later, it is so in the background we don't even think of it anymore. You know how pricing works? Multiply by ten for every step from cost of raw materials to a commercial product in your hand? 10x to turn the raw materials in components. 10x to turn components in to a product. 10x to move the product to the store. 10x to sell it to you as an item you can use. Same kind of idea when it comes to technology research, but in terms of time. Six months of research becomes five years of development becomes ten years of commercialization becomes twenty years of "it's everywhere."
- kens 4y ago
  I'll point out that transistors were invented in 1947 and the computer industry made the switch from vacuum tubes to transistors around 1958. Integrated circuits were invented in 1958 and the computer industry switched to them around 1965. My point is that historically the computer industry has been able to switch to a completely new technology a decade after it's invented. HP's memristors have been around for 15 years and haven't made much impact.
  - Throwawayaerlei 4y ago
    If you look at IBM's history you can see how reliability and the ability to manufacture components in quantity played a huge role in the adaptation of both. Bell Lab's early point contact ones weren't manufacturable. IBM didn't move to proper ICs until 1970 with the System/370 because anything they made including the low end would be sold in quantities too high for ICs before then (System/360 Models 85 and 195 preceded the 370s by 1-2 years, but they only sold 60 total units).
    - gtirloni 4y ago
      So memristors are almost here, is that what you're saying?
      - Throwawayaerlei 4y ago
        No idea. For example, between the development of core memory and DRAM there were a host of technologies they tried because core is slow and expensive to manufacture. The best they did for speed was called thin-film, and they sold only two systems with it, upgrades of the System 360 Model 91 supercomputer named the Model 95. They had 1 MiB of it and 4 MiB of core, sold to NASA, the first Model 91 customer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/360_Model_91 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/360_Model_91

justinlloyd 4y ago

A lot of technology that's out at the fringes will often be hyped up by a marketing department. It is the culinary equivalent of telling everyone how awesome the soup is going to taste just as the cook is returning from the grocery store with the unprepared, raw ingredients. We're edging closer to the "needs seasoning." There's always some company trying to sell something that doesn't really exist in a production form, and then 10 years or 20 years later, it is so in the background we don't even think of it anymore. You know how pricing works? Multiply by ten for every step from cost of raw materials to a commercial product in your hand? 10x to turn the raw materials in components. 10x to turn components in to a product. 10x to move the product to the store. 10x to sell it to you as an item you can use. Same kind of idea when it comes to technology research, but in terms of time. Six months of research becomes five years of development becomes ten years of commercialization becomes twenty years of "it's everywhere."

kens 4y ago
I'll point out that transistors were invented in 1947 and the computer industry made the switch from vacuum tubes to transistors around 1958. Integrated circuits were invented in 1958 and the computer industry switched to them around 1965. My point is that historically the computer industry has been able to switch to a completely new technology a decade after it's invented. HP's memristors have been around for 15 years and haven't made much impact.
- Throwawayaerlei 4y ago
  If you look at IBM's history you can see how reliability and the ability to manufacture components in quantity played a huge role in the adaptation of both. Bell Lab's early point contact ones weren't manufacturable. IBM didn't move to proper ICs until 1970 with the System/370 because anything they made including the low end would be sold in quantities too high for ICs before then (System/360 Models 85 and 195 preceded the 370s by 1-2 years, but they only sold 60 total units).
  - gtirloni 4y ago
    So memristors are almost here, is that what you're saying?
    - Throwawayaerlei 4y ago
      No idea. For example, between the development of core memory and DRAM there were a host of technologies they tried because core is slow and expensive to manufacture. The best they did for speed was called thin-film, and they sold only two systems with it, upgrades of the System 360 Model 91 supercomputer named the Model 95. They had 1 MiB of it and 4 MiB of core, sold to NASA, the first Model 91 customer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/360_Model_91 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/360_Model_91