5 ms·

Boise startup offers commercially available memristors?

60 points by theresistor 11y ago

shadykiller 11y ago
What happened to the HP memristor ? Are they going to launch ever ?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Zuph 11y ago
  HP has put the project on indefinite hiatus. It's probably dead forever.
  - joshuapants 11y ago
    I thought they just pushed that part of the project back. Didn't they announce that "the Machine" is still coming, just that first iterations will have a more traditional architecture?
  - tedunangst 11y ago
    It's now... The Machine! http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/536786/machine-dreams/ http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/536786/machine... The good news is they don't even need to build memristors. Even simulated memristors are faster than than memory. "The off-the-shelf, high-powered HP server completed the task in about two seconds. The simulated Machine needed only 50 milliseconds."
    - mesistor 11y ago
      The Machine was canceled in 2015: http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/05/hp-the-machine-no-memristors/ http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/05/hp-the-machine-no-memrist... There is no Machine. There never was any Machine. The Machine is an urban myth, a grand illusion, something to give your life meaning, but which is in fact not there. Someone probably made a nice sum from the temporary stock bump...
      - mfisher87 11y ago
        I have a friend in HP who actually had a job on The Machine until the "hiatus." She got switched to another project when it got put on hold... but HP was actually assigning human resources to it at one point, not just making press releases.
      - joezydeco 11y ago
        My read on The Machine was that HP was developing the system in parallel with the memory component. The idea was "imagine if you had a server with an insanely huge amount of non-volatile SRAM (that could hold OS, applications, and files), and no hard disk" It was the "huge amount of non-volatile SRAM" part that the memristor was supposed to deliver and didn't.
deutronium 11y ago
Anyone know how much they cost?
- Zuph 11y ago
  A friend emailed them for small quantity pricing a while ago. "Thank you for contacting us. Our 16 pin package is the newest offering in our Neuro-Bit line of memristor products. Single packages are $240.00 USD each. We are offering a 5% academic discount on all of your purchases. The 16 pin dip will be available for shipping late-May and we are taking pre-orders now."
  - knodi123 11y ago
    Help me out here- is that a red flag?
    - Zuph 11y ago
      Eh, depends on where you're coming from. These clearly aren't "production grade." Maybe not even "academically curious grade." Until you can at least get budgetary pricing without sending someone an email, it probably isn't even worth investigating unless you're just intensely curious. Never mind that $240 for 8 fragile, difficult-to-work-with memristors is definitely not cheap.
      - jessaustin 11y ago
        Points well taken, but if they're the only people selling anything like these, they can set whatever price they like. Higher prices also restrict their support efforts to serious people who know how things work.
      - theresistor 11y ago
        While I agree that they're not production grade, $240 is well within the budget of, say, a EE research lab that wants to experiment with memristor-based circuit topologies and has the equipment+expertise to handle them properly.
mangecoeur 11y ago
with a website like that it looks more like they should be selling "medicinal" herbs...
- Untit1ed 11y ago
  It reminds me a lot of a box for a GPU or fancy motherboard. The logo even looks exactly like he kind of one a second-tier video card manufacturer would have.
ypcx 11y ago
Can somebody explain what does this mean for the field of AI (short and longer term) besides (I guess) the obvious advantage of being able to implement software algorithms in hardware?
- cbennett 11y ago
  Its not just for the AI field, if you read their About Us page you will see that a very interesting application has to do with UAV and algorithms for motion detection. The chip set design space for this is very low energy but efficient/accurate at a certain trained task, which is what makes bio-inspired applications so compelling. But going back to AI, I would say this: Short term: a wide variety of demonstrators of various 'easy' problems, eg image and simple logic function pattern matching, in chip as opposed to in theory or software like you say. This can be done with dozens or a few hundred memristive devices. Medium term: more interesting (my maybe not trying NP hard problems yet) application in image, sound processing and other non-linear signal processing that begin to rival best approaches coming from dozens of GPU cores. Such applications might require tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of devices. Pattern matching and classifications at this stage might rival that of a very simple brain or a small component of the neo-cortex. Longer term: Unknown, but some possibilities when you use tens of millions of such devices may include full (neo)-cortex implementation in hardware, remember that an entirely new generation of non-linear algorithms that implement due to topological and temporal effects at the nano-scale may allow for better results than what we get given an equivalent number of transistors (yes, transistors are also nano-devices, but despite a small community working on sub-threshold switching, they are being used in an almost uniformly binary approach).
theresistor 11y ago
Website is definitely underwhelming, but there's some documentation that appears reasonably detailed and plausible: Data sheet: http://nebula.wsimg.com/35f756676bf3290bebff9c9ac0f9e3ea?AccessKeyId=64577CB1C10F8DCEF8A3&disposition=0&alloworigin=1 http://nebula.wsimg.com/35f756676bf3290bebff9c9ac0f9e3ea?Acc... User manual: http://nebula.wsimg.com/6dba75009009af7a59036365876b3f66?AccessKeyId=64577CB1C10F8DCEF8A3&disposition=0&alloworigin=1 http://nebula.wsimg.com/6dba75009009af7a59036365876b3f66?Acc... Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wQviPeaNpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wQviPeaNpw
- theresistor 11y ago
  After a bit more digging, it appears to be a silver chalcogenide memristor, as described here: http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/electrical_facpubs/73/ http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/electrical_facpubs/73/ This is very different materially from the TiO2 based ones used in HP-derived designs, though I'm not sure what differences that will lead to in practice.
  - cbennett 11y ago
    TLDR: There is a major mismatch between the device physics of the academic group and what is being marketed/sold. If the actual device they were selling represented what they did in this technical work, I would be very, very excited. The I/V curve looks great. BUT, compare that figure to the I/V curve represented in the longer datasheet (linked to in parent comment). A one million fold increase in resistance in 5nS- That isn't analog at all. It could be fairly emulated as almost a flip-flop with just a few transistors!! Although a binary memristor at scale might be more interesting as a memory (eg ReRAM), at this scale meant for neuromorphic analog applications, it becomes utterly uninteresting. So to be honest I am baffled how they went from such a promising inspiration to a completely bland packaged device. Two possibiliies come to mind: 'they' are entirely different groups, or a major mis-marketing is occurring in the interest of gaining some funds for future R&D.
yellowapple 11y ago
Why is there a question mark in the title? The site claims it offers memristors. No question about it.
anonbanker 11y ago
Since it's Boise, I'll put money on these guys being either former HP or Micron employees that probably got their memristor IP as part of their golden parachutes now that "The Machine" is gone.
tjgafron 11y ago
Hello Everyone. My name is Terry Gafron. I am the CEO of the company in Boise selling memristors. You all make some very good points. We are a few honest guys, trying to bring this technology to life. We do sell research grade memristors. Leon Chua has bought some from us and we are working with him to refine their characterization. While many of us are from Micron, there was no IP package from them. We developed this with a local university and are working very hard on this. We are a bare bones start-up, bootstrapping our way through this. You are correct in that there are still some discrepancies we need to resolve, but we are working on this. We have been doing contract work for DoD for the past few years, developing memristor based processors for them. We have some significant IC design experience with this sort of thing, but there is still so much that needs to be done. We sell bare bones devices we scraped up the cash to build. We do not make colossal claims. Our aim is simply to drive a stake in the sand. If you have questions, you can always send me a note at terry.gafron@bioinspired.net. Thanks all!

60 points by theresistor 11y ago

shadykiller 11y ago

What happened to the HP memristor ? Are they going to launch ever ?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Zuph 11y ago
HP has put the project on indefinite hiatus. It's probably dead forever.
- joshuapants 11y ago
  I thought they just pushed that part of the project back. Didn't they announce that "the Machine" is still coming, just that first iterations will have a more traditional architecture?
- tedunangst 11y ago
  It's now... The Machine! http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/536786/machine-dreams/ http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/536786/machine... The good news is they don't even need to build memristors. Even simulated memristors are faster than than memory. "The off-the-shelf, high-powered HP server completed the task in about two seconds. The simulated Machine needed only 50 milliseconds."
  - mesistor 11y ago
    The Machine was canceled in 2015: http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/05/hp-the-machine-no-memristors/ http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/05/hp-the-machine-no-memrist... There is no Machine. There never was any Machine. The Machine is an urban myth, a grand illusion, something to give your life meaning, but which is in fact not there. Someone probably made a nice sum from the temporary stock bump...
    - mfisher87 11y ago
      I have a friend in HP who actually had a job on The Machine until the "hiatus." She got switched to another project when it got put on hold... but HP was actually assigning human resources to it at one point, not just making press releases.
    - joezydeco 11y ago
      My read on The Machine was that HP was developing the system in parallel with the memory component. The idea was "imagine if you had a server with an insanely huge amount of non-volatile SRAM (that could hold OS, applications, and files), and no hard disk" It was the "huge amount of non-volatile SRAM" part that the memristor was supposed to deliver and didn't.

deutronium 11y ago

Anyone know how much they cost?

Zuph 11y ago
A friend emailed them for small quantity pricing a while ago. "Thank you for contacting us. Our 16 pin package is the newest offering in our Neuro-Bit line of memristor products. Single packages are $240.00 USD each. We are offering a 5% academic discount on all of your purchases. The 16 pin dip will be available for shipping late-May and we are taking pre-orders now."
- knodi123 11y ago
  Help me out here- is that a red flag?
  - Zuph 11y ago
    Eh, depends on where you're coming from. These clearly aren't "production grade." Maybe not even "academically curious grade." Until you can at least get budgetary pricing without sending someone an email, it probably isn't even worth investigating unless you're just intensely curious. Never mind that $240 for 8 fragile, difficult-to-work-with memristors is definitely not cheap.
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      Points well taken, but if they're the only people selling anything like these, they can set whatever price they like. Higher prices also restrict their support efforts to serious people who know how things work.
    - theresistor 11y ago
      While I agree that they're not production grade, $240 is well within the budget of, say, a EE research lab that wants to experiment with memristor-based circuit topologies and has the equipment+expertise to handle them properly.

mangecoeur 11y ago

with a website like that it looks more like they should be selling "medicinal" herbs...

Untit1ed 11y ago
It reminds me a lot of a box for a GPU or fancy motherboard. The logo even looks exactly like he kind of one a second-tier video card manufacturer would have.

ypcx 11y ago

Can somebody explain what does this mean for the field of AI (short and longer term) besides (I guess) the obvious advantage of being able to implement software algorithms in hardware?

cbennett 11y ago
Its not just for the AI field, if you read their About Us page you will see that a very interesting application has to do with UAV and algorithms for motion detection. The chip set design space for this is very low energy but efficient/accurate at a certain trained task, which is what makes bio-inspired applications so compelling. But going back to AI, I would say this: Short term: a wide variety of demonstrators of various 'easy' problems, eg image and simple logic function pattern matching, in chip as opposed to in theory or software like you say. This can be done with dozens or a few hundred memristive devices. Medium term: more interesting (my maybe not trying NP hard problems yet) application in image, sound processing and other non-linear signal processing that begin to rival best approaches coming from dozens of GPU cores. Such applications might require tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of devices. Pattern matching and classifications at this stage might rival that of a very simple brain or a small component of the neo-cortex. Longer term: Unknown, but some possibilities when you use tens of millions of such devices may include full (neo)-cortex implementation in hardware, remember that an entirely new generation of non-linear algorithms that implement due to topological and temporal effects at the nano-scale may allow for better results than what we get given an equivalent number of transistors (yes, transistors are also nano-devices, but despite a small community working on sub-threshold switching, they are being used in an almost uniformly binary approach).

theresistor 11y ago

Website is definitely underwhelming, but there's some documentation that appears reasonably detailed and plausible: Data sheet: http://nebula.wsimg.com/35f756676bf3290bebff9c9ac0f9e3ea?AccessKeyId=64577CB1C10F8DCEF8A3&disposition=0&alloworigin=1 http://nebula.wsimg.com/35f756676bf3290bebff9c9ac0f9e3ea?Acc... User manual: http://nebula.wsimg.com/6dba75009009af7a59036365876b3f66?AccessKeyId=64577CB1C10F8DCEF8A3&disposition=0&alloworigin=1 http://nebula.wsimg.com/6dba75009009af7a59036365876b3f66?Acc... Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wQviPeaNpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wQviPeaNpw

theresistor 11y ago
After a bit more digging, it appears to be a silver chalcogenide memristor, as described here: http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/electrical_facpubs/73/ http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/electrical_facpubs/73/ This is very different materially from the TiO2 based ones used in HP-derived designs, though I'm not sure what differences that will lead to in practice.
- cbennett 11y ago
  TLDR: There is a major mismatch between the device physics of the academic group and what is being marketed/sold. If the actual device they were selling represented what they did in this technical work, I would be very, very excited. The I/V curve looks great. BUT, compare that figure to the I/V curve represented in the longer datasheet (linked to in parent comment). A one million fold increase in resistance in 5nS- That isn't analog at all. It could be fairly emulated as almost a flip-flop with just a few transistors!! Although a binary memristor at scale might be more interesting as a memory (eg ReRAM), at this scale meant for neuromorphic analog applications, it becomes utterly uninteresting. So to be honest I am baffled how they went from such a promising inspiration to a completely bland packaged device. Two possibiliies come to mind: 'they' are entirely different groups, or a major mis-marketing is occurring in the interest of gaining some funds for future R&D.

yellowapple 11y ago

Why is there a question mark in the title? The site claims it offers memristors. No question about it.

anonbanker 11y ago

Since it's Boise, I'll put money on these guys being either former HP or Micron employees that probably got their memristor IP as part of their golden parachutes now that "The Machine" is gone.

tjgafron 11y ago

Hello Everyone. My name is Terry Gafron. I am the CEO of the company in Boise selling memristors. You all make some very good points. We are a few honest guys, trying to bring this technology to life. We do sell research grade memristors. Leon Chua has bought some from us and we are working with him to refine their characterization. While many of us are from Micron, there was no IP package from them. We developed this with a local university and are working very hard on this. We are a bare bones start-up, bootstrapping our way through this. You are correct in that there are still some discrepancies we need to resolve, but we are working on this. We have been doing contract work for DoD for the past few years, developing memristor based processors for them. We have some significant IC design experience with this sort of thing, but there is still so much that needs to be done. We sell bare bones devices we scraped up the cash to build. We do not make colossal claims. Our aim is simply to drive a stake in the sand. If you have questions, you can always send me a note at terry.gafron@bioinspired.net. Thanks all!