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Wasn't HP working on memresistors that were going to be way faster than traditional memory, but they've pushed it back a year or two so their partners could adj
by programminggeek 14y ago
Wasn't HP working on memresistors that were going to be way faster than traditional memory, but they've pushed it back a year or two so their partners could adjust their biz models? Were they waiting for DDR4 maybe?
- Tuna-Fish 14y agoMemristors are aiming for flash initially, not DRAM. They probably don't have the write endurance to deal with DRAM-like loads. Also, DDR4 is an interface spec that has very little to do with the actual RAM.
- bloaf 14y agoYep, it was my understanding that they would use memristors in flash first, then SSDs, then RAM over the course of a few years.
- mercuryrising 14y agoHopefully. Memristors are weird. Depending on the material you use to make it, the mechanisms behind the memristance change. For instance, in some materials you create and destroy nano-wires at the interface of metal-insulator that allow electrons to tunnel through the thin insulator. With other materials (such as TiO2 memristors), the materials undergo phase transitions that change from conducting to non-conducting depending on the applied voltage. There's probably others that we haven't found yet. The TaO2 memristors are FAST. They can last a really long time as well - people have recorded 10^10 open loop write cycles for memristors. Most things sound too good to be true, but memristors scale incredibly well (they are created in a cross bar pattern, like core memory back in the day) so you can make them extremely dense. They also hold their state when the power goes out, they are quick, and they last for a long time. I can see a convergence of the memory we use in computers, as once they catch on, they will bring inexpensive, plentiful, fast memory.