Memristor = God Particle =Skynet =Rise of Machines?

Better find Sara Conner...it has started

>>Williams also wants to eat into the CPU. He says that many processes requiring fuzzy logic, like recognizing a face, are very hard to work out with that yes/no logic of a digital computer. But for an analog computer—like, say, the brain—it’s a piece of cake. So Williams proposes a CPU with multiple processing cores: Some digital for the number crunching that today's computers do so well, and others using analog memristors. Take facial recognition. Someone’s face can change from day to day, and definitely from year to year. But it’s not a drastic change that a yes/no digital system is good at figuring out. It’s a mild difference with some degree of change along a continuum that Williams says is perfect for an analog computer.

www.popsci.com...

reply to post by BlackProjects


I'm afraid to say it. I don't mean to be demeaning to you but you obviously don't know what a memristor is..
Read the following...

Computing technology takes a big step with the memristor

The memristor was first theorized in 1971 by a math-loving electrical engineer by the name of Leon Chua, and is a word merger (or... "wordger") of "memory" and "resistor". Before now, there were three pillars to conventional electric circuits: the resistor (which produces a voltage drop between two terminals), the capacitor (which can store electricity), and the inductor (which can create a magnetic flux). This new memrister can be seen as the missing 'fourth element' in the development of a new design of the electric circuit. The memrister is capable of changing its resistance between two states, and maintaining these states after being powered down. It "is essentially a resistor with memory," said Stan Williams, of HP Labs.

Electronics' 'missing link' found

Details of an entirely new kind of electronic device, which could make chips smaller and far more efficient, have been outlined by scientists.

This could allow researchers to build new kinds of computer memory that would would not require powering up.

Today, most PCs use dynamic random access memory (DRAM) which loses data when the power is turned off.

But a computer built with memristors could allow PCs that start up instantly, laptops that retain sessions after the battery dies, or mobile phones that can last for weeks without needing a charge.

"If you turn on your computer it will come up instantly where it was when you turned it off," Professor Williams told Reuters.

"That is a very interesting potential application, and one that is very realistic."

And the so called GOD Particle the Higgs Boson may not exist.


The Higgs Boson

Early formulation of the theories estimated that the Higgs boson would have mass energy in excess of 1 TeV

Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a particle accelerator located at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. It lies in a tunnel under France and Switzerland.

The LHC is in the final stages of construction, and commissioning, with some sections already being cooled down to their final operating temperature of ~2K. The first beams are due for injection mid June 2008 with the first collisions planned to take place 2 months later.[1] The LHC will become the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator.[2] The LHC is being funded and built in collaboration with over two thousand physicists from thirty-four countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories.

When activated, it is theorized that the collider will produce the elusive Higgs boson,

The protons will each have an energy of 7 TeV, giving a total collision energy of 14 TeV

My view is the Higgs Boson doesn't exist and we will only see ever more exotic fleeting particles from LHC and the occational Micro Black hole.....

All the best.

NeoN HaZe


[edit on 1-5-2008 by Neon Haze]

Heh I'm a EE how about you? Better talk to Popular Science..I was referring to their headline (that of link I posted)..
"HP Discovers Potential "God Particle" of Electronics"
Yes I know of physics reference as well..

From what I understand, the memristor, by having analog properties could save us the burden of having to work with long chains of bytes for precision and may be more appropiate for signal processing. That will surely bring many advances, but in order to pull a Skynet we need artificiall intelligence and the memristor will not help much on that field other than processing speed. However, this, along that transistor I saw in a past thread will surely accomplish that.

"Memristors" have no special properties beyond what a Flash memory cell has or a magnetic core memory toroid. It could be used as a non-volatile memory cell or under very limited circumstances a programmable resistance. If it gets used practically it might be in what's called "Next Generation Non-volatile Memory" or ngNVM. But there's already lots of competition there.

One thing not mentioned in any of the articles I've seen is detailed electrical specifications or performance parameters. Without that you can't really tell what it might really be good for in a practical sense.

It is an interesting permutation for existing capacitor/resistor/inductor types. One caveat is that it's only possible to make it using nanotechnology so it's use is restricted to very low current or voltage levels - on an integrated circuit only and probably never a discrete part. That's part of why it's never been created before despite being predicted half a century ago.

reply to post by skieter


May I suggest you read up on what memristors are? They can do an awful lot more than act as just non-volatile memory.