4 ms·

Memristor RAM now cheap as chips

15 points by drtse4 14y ago

ajross 14y ago
Terrible, awful, no good headline. What the lede actually says: "Cheaper memristors could result from an accidental discovery at University College London." I didn't bother reading any farther. I'll wait for a better presentation.
- shabble 14y ago
  That would probably be here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18103772 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18103772 and the HN thread from the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3991411 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3991411
sp332 14y ago
My question is: Why didn't Intel already know about this? They have more real and theoretical knowledge of the behavior of silicon and various silicon-based materials than anyone else.
- gauravk92 14y ago
  Their research labs have quantum computers, I'm sure they are well aware. As for pushing this to market, no hurry, they're in the business of selling silicone 8086 based processors, they'll probably keep doing that for as long as possible.
debacle 14y ago
The article changes tenses a lot, which makes it almost impossible to tell if this has been created already, or is waiting to be created. Dr Kenyon's site doesn't really help in that matter.
smlacy 14y ago
Wow, only 3,000 cycles. I haven't heard about this property of memristors before. I guess they still have a long time to go before becoming production-ready. On the good side, they look very, very dense, so maybe some kind of ECC would help?http://www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/~tkenyon/Photonic_Materials/Silicon_RRAM.html http://www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/~tkenyon/Photonic_Materials/Silicon_...
- Symmetry 14y ago
  Well, IMEC was able to create ReRAM cells with a billion read/write cycles, and HP has talked about accumulating data at a trillion cycles, so hopefully the commercial product will be much more durable.
maxharris 14y ago
No, it isn't "as cheap as chips." I've looked, and I can't buy it at any price, which means it's basically infinity. (Searching Newegg returns this: 'We have found 0 items that match "memristor".') However, lots of places are selling all kinds of things with conventional RAM in them, for prices a whole lot lower than infinity. (Unfortunately, hot air is not included.)

15 points by drtse4 14y ago

Terrible, awful, no good headline. What the lede actually says: "Cheaper memristors could result from an accidental discovery at University College London." I didn't bother reading any farther. I'll wait for a better presentation.

shabble 14y ago
That would probably be here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18103772 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18103772 and the HN thread from the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3991411 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3991411

sp332 14y ago

My question is: Why didn't Intel already know about this? They have more real and theoretical knowledge of the behavior of silicon and various silicon-based materials than anyone else.

gauravk92 14y ago
Their research labs have quantum computers, I'm sure they are well aware. As for pushing this to market, no hurry, they're in the business of selling silicone 8086 based processors, they'll probably keep doing that for as long as possible.

debacle 14y ago

The article changes tenses a lot, which makes it almost impossible to tell if this has been created already, or is waiting to be created. Dr Kenyon's site doesn't really help in that matter.

smlacy 14y ago

Wow, only 3,000 cycles. I haven't heard about this property of memristors before. I guess they still have a long time to go before becoming production-ready. On the good side, they look very, very dense, so maybe some kind of ECC would help?http://www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/~tkenyon/Photonic_Materials/Silicon_RRAM.html http://www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/~tkenyon/Photonic_Materials/Silicon_...

Symmetry 14y ago
Well, IMEC was able to create ReRAM cells with a billion read/write cycles, and HP has talked about accumulating data at a trillion cycles, so hopefully the commercial product will be much more durable.

maxharris 14y ago

No, it isn't "as cheap as chips." I've looked, and I can't buy it at any price, which means it's basically infinity. (Searching Newegg returns this: 'We have found 0 items that match "memristor".') However, lots of places are selling all kinds of things with conventional RAM in them, for prices a whole lot lower than infinity. (Unfortunately, hot air is not included.)